How safe is your web space?

We all have personal and private information in social media platforms, which can be a  Facebook profile, Twitter or Instagram. Social media platforms helped lots of people to interact better with their friends and families (Roebuck, Siha & Bell 2013). YouTube and Snapchat have played an important part in our lives, by facilitating our communication through a range of different people from different cultures and background. However, have you ever asked yourself about your online information which could be at risk? Do you know that your online photos, emails and accounts might be at risk of hackers? It’s very important to know and understand what might be the risk of storing our private information online and how to protect yourself from the cybercrime.

Personally, I like to travel all around the world, from Europe to Asia, then back to Australia. Connecting to the internet sometimes can be hard overseas, I used to go to the nearest coffee shop and jump into their free internet to keep myself active on social media. Unfortunately, being active on social media was inconvenient, which has triggered security concerns over my private information. Some of my horror stories with hackers were: personal identity been stolen, charges were taken from my credit card for items been purchased from online places which I have never been and money was stolen from my bank account. To be safe on the web space away from the hackers, simple tips have been followed to protect your privacy: Creating a weak password can be easy to breach by the hackers. Passwords should include special characters such as; capital letters and symbols (Garfinkel & Spafford 2002). Some of the social media platforms give you the opportunity to restrict access from family member or friend as well as blocking messages from strangers, to protect your personal information on the web space. Antivirus is another security guard for your devices, to protect your accounts from been hacked.

ACIC (Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission) has considered Australia as an easy target for Cybercrime due to the wealth of our nation and the high use of social media. According to the ACIC, Australia has been losing $1 billion annually because of the cybercrime (ACIC 2019). Apart from losing money, cybercrime which includes hackers, have caused more damage to our personal identity as well as a huge impact on our psychological and emotional wellbeing. ACSC, the Australian Cyber Security Centre, has advised some easy steps on her government website to protect people’s private information and accounts. Some of the steps are: in order to secure your email and social media, make sure that you use a strong password of at least 13 characters and a different password for each account. Carefully avoid the phishing attack, which can access your private information through your email, SMS or your social media accounts (ACSC 2019). Phishing can be through a scam email, ACSC advised not to use the scam link to enter your username and passwords. Another advice was not to connect your devices to the public Wi-Fi without a VPN (Virtual Private Network).  

Reference:

Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission 2019, Cybercrime, viewed 15 July 2019, <https://www.acic.gov.au/about-crime/organised-crime-groups/cybercrime>.

Australian Cyber Security Centre 2019, Easy steps to secure your online information, viewed 13 July 2019, < https://www.cyber.gov.au/advice/easystepsguide>.

Bell, R. L., Roebuck, D., Siha, S. 2013, ‘Faculty Usage of Social Media and Mobile Devices: Analysis of Advantages and Concerns’, Interdisciplinary Journal of E-Learning and Learning Objects, Volume 9, 171-192.

Garfinkel, S, Spafford 2002, G 2013, Web Security, Privacy & Commerce, Privacy-Protecting Techniques, O’Reilly, Cambridge, pp. 230-256.

Identity on the web space

This blog will be about how people might have a different personality on different platforms on the web space such as social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Snapchat. Have you ever noticed that your identity might be either personal or professional on different social media platforms? Do you usually act more professionally on the Facebook university group and more personally on the Facebook family group?

In the psychological literature, personal identity refers to unitary and continues awareness of who we are (Beswick 2007). A good example of the personal aspects of social and personal identity is when we ask ourselves whether we are the same people today as a long time ago in the past. We all knew from our life experience that as much changes occur to our experience, we still able to recognise each other identities. An example of that; for those who study at school, when they meet former classmates who they have not seen for a while, will be able to identify each other. They will remember characteristics people with names and memories whose life stories might be changed or faces might not be recognized, that recognition is identified as personal identity (Rac & Poletti 2014). People’s identity can be different on the web space, either can be personal or professional. In my personal experience on social media, I will choose Facebook as an example of how identity can be changed on one social media platform. I have two Facebook profiles, one has more to engage with family and friends and another one for my university group. My identity at the first profile is more about my personal and private life whereas the second profile is more about my professional life at university.

When we think about the web space, We can see the positive and the negative side of it. The web space helps people to be connected with each other as well as sharing the diverse media content. adults and Young people might access negative content such as violence content on social media (Calvert & Huffaker 2017). The way we think about ourselves and others might be changed, it depends on the content we expose ourselves to on social media. Young people are more vulnerable to these content which can be on the web with a different interpretation of what is appropriate and inappropriate. “individuals develop a sense of self from creating an impression they wish to give to others” (Manago et al., 2008). Adolescent and adult between 18 and early 20s, they usually rely on social media to identify who they are. Interests, relationships, personalities, intellectual and physical attributes that we developed and gained in the knowledge and understanding of our self-identity. Currently, the Internet and social media have influenced our self-identities compared to previous generations. The web space has shaped our self-identity due to the recent explosion of technology. Social media has been the most powerful way of altering self-identity through the shift from being internal to externally driven. I can imagine how my future digital identity will look like in a few questions: How can I ensure that others view me positively? And How will others look at me?.

References:

Beswick, D 2007, Identity: a Psychological Perspective, Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne, viewed 17 June 2019.

Calvert, SL & Huffaker, DA 2017, ‘Gender, Identity, and Language Use in Teenage Blogs’, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, vol. 10, no. 2, viewed 17 June 2019, JCMC10211.

Rac, J & Poletti, A 2014, Identity technologies, viewed 16 June 2019, <https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=K_phAgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR5&dq=identity+on+the+internet&ots=IH3C-4D4a-&sig=6223d4Az29Zb-Z1V_Ex2uvSEiJI&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false>.

Manago, AM & et al (2008). Self-presentation and gender on MySpace, Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 29, 446-458, viewed 15 June 2019.