Assignment 2-1 Pop Culture - Weekly Written Analysis

While it is true that computers have come a long way since their invention but so has the technology of stealing or dismantling the encryption used for our protection. This is something that people don't think about until it is too late. For example, with the Iphone, you can connect to any Wi-Fi connection but unless you know whose connection you're using and know that they're not out to seal your info, don't connect. An Iphone is marketed as a tool that can do all. From entertainment to those 3-way meetings that you can do on the go, it can do it all. But what they don't market is that it is one of the easiest devices to hack into. People store everything from info about family, friends & acquaintances to personal things. Would you want someone to be able to go through your personal planner whenever they like? Personal information is very sensitive and I don't think that people pay enough attention to it. Information is a very lucrative business. Most people say that their credit is bad or what will they get with my info and so on. But with the right information and the wrong person, it can be very dangerous. For example, let’s say that I find your name, address and social security number online or from some paper lying in the doctor’s office. I can then do a search and find the name of your kids, relatives and their personal info and so on just from a couple of simple items that I happened to oversee. I then sell your information along with the information of your family and children’s information in a large file of other names to a company overseas. They then have different laws regarding personal information. Some have no laws on this subject. They then get hacked and all the info that they had has been compromised. Your child’s information has just fell into the hands of a career criminal whose sole duty is to find vulnerable people and take advantage of them. They then open many accounts in your child’s name and it will most likely not be discovered until your child who is now 1 or 2 reaches the age when they want to buy a car. By then, this criminal is long gone and has been for years.
Yes, I realize that in this scenario there isn’t much you can do about the info at the doctor’s office, but how many times have you received a letter or a bill with your social security number on it and just tossed it in the trash. Once your trash leaves your house it could end up anywhere, maybe it’s blown from the trash truck or ends up in someone’s trash sculpture, who knows. The lesson in this story is to be more aware of whom and what kind of information you release and what you do with the information you discard because someday it could be your information that ends up in that criminal’s hands.