Friday, 20 January 2012

Password security on the internet?

I am a forty something mother of three and one of your constituents. I use facebook and so do my kids. We look at each others facebook and enjoy the fun side but give each other enough respect not to interfere with how it is used. I am banned from commenting on their facebooks. And although everyone tells me that kids these days know everything about the internet, I know this not to be true, no one can and you can only catch up with hackers not run in-front of them and stop their sick games.
Hackers can get onto your facebook and much more if you use the same password for everything or use a simple one. These days you need a secure place to keep your passwords but how can you be sure the sites that advertise these facilities are safe and why are our schools not teaching our children this very basic safety issue as a general piece of information, we teach our children to cross the roads to keep them safe why not the basics of internet saftey?

When the person who sets up the facebook account has died a hacker has been going around putting unsavoury pictures and comments on. The police are unable to help and facbook needs its members to act, which is not easy to do if you have been shocked or unable to respond. This problem would not arise if all internet users were aware of the simple steps it takes to protect their social networks. Government are increasingly making us use the internet to fill out forms, Vat and passports to name a few things we are encouraged to do on line. We need a gold badge standard of safe sites that we can promote on our social network, which will remind us to do the same in every interaction with the internet. Scams are making a lot of money out of us.

A girl in our town died this week in-front of her friends and ever since her facebook has had tributes and a hacker from Canada put a picture of a girl with her face missing on facebook.  Children and parents all over the network have been affected by this as the facebook principle is to share.
I know there are sick people and the internet enables them to infiltrate our moments and space on this wonderful technology but it does not have to be this way, with careful planning and with the right knowledge. I want to teach my children and myself how to take control. The problem is who do I trust? How do I know how to trust on the internet? How can I look safely for the needle of information in the haystack of technology?

Schools use this technology but on the whole do not know how to simply protect themselves let alone be able to converse with their students about internet security. We teach our children to cross the roads safely, why do we not tech them how to take simple steps to control their space on the internet.

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