Category Archives: Technology

Are You Apart of the Social Networking Scene? Your Private Settings Are Not So Private Anymore

Companies are making social networking sites a first step to pre-screening before hiring.  They’re checking your conversation, photos and anything else that will give insight into your character.  Your personal Facebook Page is not so personal anymore; people are actually fired over Facebook Postings.

According to NBC 4 New York, Twitter was asked by a judge to surrender an Occupy Wall Street protestors tweets.  “We are disappointed in the judge’s decision and are considering our options,” a Twitter spokeswoman said Monday.”  “Twitter’s Terms of Service have long made it absolutely clear that its users own their content.”

Occupy Wall Street Protestors (c) 2013 Photo by Copyright Associated Press/NBC New York

Social media has become bigger than the federal government and more people are tracking you more often than you think.  So, If you put all of your information including posts, photos, videos, resumes and what have you on the World Wide Web, It’s there for the world’s picking and it will be your own fault.  Whether it’s on one of your many social networking sites or email, you should expect to be a potential victim of hacking, researched or investigated.  You can have a life changing experience simply by having your alone hacked.

Is your securtiy at risk? (c) 2013 Photo by D. Garvin

 How can you protect yourselves and your personal information from being invaded from privacy and internet fraud?  What about when companies tell you to go online to apply for jobs? How safe are you with these companies? Craigslist has become another popular site for job searches, but you never know what you may get when not dealing with a company’s direct website.  Extra precautions should always be taken when dealing with a third party.

That’s exactly what happened to Sonia Roe, a customer service Rep in the Atlanta area.   While searching for work on Craigslist, she applied for a position using her home address and email not thinking much of it because she linked to the company’s site and it all looked legitimate.  However, a Few weeks later she received a $1600 money order, in which case she assumed it was from another organization who she expected to receive support from for her education.

Roe says, “So, I deposited the money order, and all of a sudden my account was in the negative.”  After reporting to the fraud department, she discovers that her personal information had been collected after applying for the online position.  “Luckily I called the fraud department because they traced the numbers on the money order right back to the man who sent it.”  “Apparently he has had a history of fraudulent money orders”.  There are actually hacking classes, software and an operating system created, which makes it so much easier for hackers today.  An Operating System called Kali Linux built into computers used to do a penetration testing is given away for free hoping that the big companies will bite and take the hacking classes offered by them, which is said to be a $4000 class for these companies.

Information is being hacked every six seconds and you must learn ways to protect yourself.  Here is a link that can give you a few tips to protect yourself.  Other privacy issue the citizens of the United States have to be concerned with today is the idea of the government’s National Security Agency (NSA) tracking and collecting our phone calls, monitoring the numbers we call and the duration of the call.  However, the president suggests that they’re not monitoring the content of the call, but the goal is to gather and enter the information into a government database allowing it to sit unless otherwise needed for criminal investigation.

This act is turning talks towards the idea of revisiting the 4^th amendment, which is the part of the bill that guards against unreasonable search and seizure without a warrant, since that law was put in place before internet and social media existed.  The NSA and FBI are tapping directly into servers of web companies.