Final Online Privacy Blog - MGMT 3601

The ideas and concepts in this class have been extremely interesting and captivating for me personally. I understand that as our technology grows so will our network, allowing people to contact each other in new ways all the time. The idea of a network has been discussed in a positive light for the most part in our entire class because we have all seen its benefits personally. Our generation has been using computers for as long as we can remember and children still continue learning to use electronic devices at younger ages ever year. This concept has lead to people creating Facebook profiles for their children and creating a online identity for them before they have even become old enough to speak. I personally believe that we are going to become so intertwined in our online identities and networks that we will become uninterested with our actual reality. For some this is already true, many people lead different or more exciting lives on the internet than they do in real life. Whether they create a famous blog, youtube video, website, fake Facebook account or any other form of online identity, the individual is become less of an offline identity. This could also relate to the way that hacktivists work and still have day jobs when they are not hacking. Hacktivism is another subject I have further expanded my knowledge on because of this class. I feel like there is so much that could be covered in this class that it is difficult to contain it all in one semester. I have now written 10 blogs on online privacy and could definitely keep writing more on the subject because it never stops changing. The main thing I have learned from our information network is that you can never be too safe on the internet or believe everything you see.

Intermediate Network Tools

Intermediate network tools are the only type of censorship I have ever knowingly faced on the internet. In school we were never allowed to view sites that contained content that was against the student code of conduct. Sites that could potentially have quality information such as YouTube , Twitter, Wikipedia, some web hosting websites and blogging websites were impossible to access. I understand the school board's decision to block some forms of content on the internet because they do not want to expose themselves to any trouble with parents. Some parents do the same at home and do not want their children exposed to of violence, nudity, racism, harassment, etc. These intermediate networks allow users to post anything they want no matter the quality of writing or idea but there is some intelligent material. There are some websites such as Facebook, Myspace and other social networking sites that I understand being blocked because of time wasting. These are the websites that schools should block completely. They could look into the possibility of specific page/genre blocking instead of entire websites. I understand that censorship is a concern for parents but the level of censorship differs between parents and kids will always find a way in the end.

Concluding Blog

To wrap things up on this blog, I have a whole new perspective towards online privacy.  Our lives online really are becoming more like an open book that everyone can read.  The web is becoming more people-centric, and the more information that people share online, the more connected everyone will be.   No one is private online.  We can increase our privacy online by making sure a site is safe before sharing information,  watching our online accounts, protecting our wireless connections, using a privacy orientated email service, using a virtual private network to hide our IP addess, and using “Peerblock” to prevent known risks from seeing your computer.  Although there are laws and regulations in Canada to protect our online safety, a lot of it comes down to your own measures and responsibilities online.  We must be very aware and cautious of the information we are sharing online as we do not know who is viewing that information.  I also feel that the government should take a further look into such Bills, as Bill C-12 to help protect us online.  Bill C-12 was proposed to amend PIPEDA, and strengthen the policies associated with PIPEDA.  This will help protect and empower consumers, and clarify and streamline rules for businesses.  It would also make data breach notifications mandatory.  This would increase transparency, and increase online privacy.  I think this Bill would be very important, as social media companies withhold so much of our personal identifiable information.  So to conclude, always be aware and cautious.  Online privacy may be considered dead already, but we must do anything we can to protect ourselves online.

Internet Censorship

I have faced internet censorship in grade school, high school, and I am curious if I currently face any I am unaware of today.  I remember growing up on computers and many of my classmates were as skilled as me at typing and writing code. We did not hack our way around the censorship but some students could  find a program or process that allowed us to bypass the firewalls. I have never been in a school that has had a firewall I was unable to bypass and this definitely is something I have taken for granted. One of the most interested and recent cases of online censorship was the Arab Spring. The Arab Spring was the way that social media and our networks allowed people to overthrow the government in Egypt and Libya. There is a quote that stated " We use Facebook to schedule protests, Twitter or coordinate, and Youtube to tell the world." This was understood eventually by the government and internet access was completely cut off for large periods of time. I believe that we are living in a world more connected than ever and when people use the resources available they can make much more of a difference than ever before.


http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/25/twitter-blocked-egypt/

Anonymous Hacks Chinese Government Websites

Online privacy and internet privacy in China have been an issue for many years due to their government's censorship China has been conducting censorship for over 60 years under the communist party. People have been arrested and who knows what else for speaking badly about the country online. A specific case is when a Chinese reporter sent an email through Yahoo and it was intercepted by the government at Yahoo China headquarters. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison for speaking badly about the country in an email that would be freedom of speech in Canada. Stories like this make you happy that our online censorship laws in Canada are non existent for the most part and that we do not need to use anonymous networks to connect to the real internet. Tor anonymity network is designed for users in countries that have censorship on the internet to be able to use the full uncensored internet. Tor and VPN were both programs that Anonymous posted online when they hacked hundreds of government run websites. The website's homepage displayed in red letters " Hack by ANONYMOUS." Bellow that was a message that read " Your government controls the internet in your country and strives to filter what it considers a threat for it. Be careful. Use VPN for your own security. or Tor." This final message makes me think about whether we do truly face no censorship online.  

My Google Doc Problem

I was recently the victim of an online privacy breach because of Facebook. A member of my group had posted a screenshot of their computer which accidentally allowed anyone with access to the photo to see the URL. While we were working on the Google Docs paper we suddenly noticed a number of people had begun editing our paper. At one point there were 13 anonymous users posting pictures and text to our document that was completely unrelated. While some of the changes were humorous such as adding a photo of Nicolas Cage to our cover page and changing our bibliography to say "Plagerized the whole thing", the intrusion was frustrating. The group leader was forced to close off all public editing and start a new Google Doc. After the new document was created our group was provided with new editing privileges and we reread the entire business outline for alterations. This was a long a tedious process that has taught me a lesson about open source sharing. There are precautions I never believed we would have to take to protect our privacy because Facebook is open to more than just friends.