"Over the past four years, Google has admitted 'scanning and indexing' student email messages and data mining student users for commercial gain." What to take away? Data mining is present everywhere and better encryption is becoming more and more relevant in the digital life of a college student in 2018.
College students should be on the lookout for breaches in their social media accounts. In this digital age, college kids put most of their information on their social media accounts and should take the necessary precautions to create secure passwords.
1. Don't download free media.
2. Don't overshare personal information on social media accounts.
3. Change passwords regularly.
4. Be cautious on public networks and computers.
The first piece of advice in the article for protecting personal information is to download Signal, the encrypted messaging service we discussed in class.
Any sensitive information that could be accessed by hackers should be encrypted, especially when communicating over wireless networks. Make sure to keep your private key confidential.
This article, combined with the guide to staying completely anonymous on the internet linked at the end of it, suggest that one of the easiest ways to be anonymous online is to use a private browser like Ghostery, or a private search engine like DuckDuckGo. These services don't track your information the same way that Google does, making your online browsing experience more private and secure.
This article discusses how there needs to be advanced cryptography in many facets of life for a person in the modern era from credit cards to phone calls to ATMS. It also describes how encryption uses such a large number of combinations, a brute force attack will never worm
If you are a college student or anyone else and you play online video games (fortnite, clash of clans, etc), you should be on the lookout for scams. They usually target people who aren't willing to pay for in-game currency, and none of them ever give what they promise.
Advice: Be careful with what information is stored on online devices. Always assume that the information can be leaked so you are never too vulnerable to an attack. Keep a strong password to protect your information
Even when college students use computer or electronic devices that belong to the school, any websites they visit, links they download, and videos they watch can offer behavioral information and data that is directly tied to that student's profile, and thus them too. It's important to be aware of this fact, and realize that whatever privacy you think that Mac in the back of the library offers you is in reality nonexistent. That Mac is uploading your data to the Cloud every minute you use it, and it's important to track and understand that your online information is being sent, without your consent, to other entities. So, be careful with what you search up next time.
Schools have a responsibility to protect your information, but it can be vulnerable to release or data breaches. Be careful when giving out personal information and try to educate yourself on your rights as a student so that you can best protect yourself.
It is possible to have security, but not privacy, so although you believe your data may be secure, your privacy can be being invaded. You wouldn't know by who, so the best thing to do for now until privacy is better regulated is to be mindful of what you are doing on the internet.