Internet Safety

To Question:

How does the internet help me?
How can the internet hurt me?
What is my Personally Identifiable Information (PII)?
What are all the ways that I can connect to the internet?
What are some of the ways that I can be tracked on the internet?

To Watch & Read:

Holy cow is there a lot to know about internet safety? Why are we learning about internet safety in Engineering Department? Because many times when you are stuck on a problem that you don't know how to fix, the best thing to do is to look up the answer on the interwebs! There's a lot of useful things on the internet, and a lot of dangerous and sketchy things as well. There's a lot to cover, so let's dive in!

Personally Identifiable information (PII)

First off, what do you have to hide from the internet? In short, everything! Hackers and no-do-gooders will try their best to get your information, whether it be general information about you, or information related to your online accounts that you own and use. They will try to get anything that they can in order to either 1) Sell the information that they've received, or 2) Use the information that they've obtained in order to get more information either from you or from others. This information that they are trying to get is usually Personally Identifiable information (PII). This is information that uniquely identifies you as a person. Examples of PII include, but are not limited to, the following:

Name (first, last, etc)
Birthdate or Place of Birth
Mother's maiden name
Social security number
Home or work address
Phone number
Credit card number
Bank or financial information
Crypto wallet id
Grades
Email
Social media accounts
Passwords
Biometric Data
Computer or Cell Phone identifiers

Personally Identifiable Information (1:54)

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Passwords

A password is a unique key that you use to log in to certain accounts. Passwords exist to help protect you when you are online, as well as when you are offline. You may know the frustration of forgetting your password, and needing to reset it. Passwords serve as one of the most basic defenses against would be hackers. Strong passwords allow you to be more protected on the internet, where weak passwords would almost be the same as having no password. So choose a strong password! Back in the day, it was suggested that you have a very unique password with lots of different numbers and symbols. The problem is that you tend to forget those very quickly. Now-a-days it's recommended that you utilize a passphrase rather than a password. An example of a password may be something like SpaceC3nter! This password is admittedly ok, but not great. Compare that with "The Space Center is the #1 place that I'd visit!" (including the quotes); that is a passphrase, and is much easier to remember, and is much more secure!

A fun way to determine how secure your passwords are is to use the tool How Secure Is My Password

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. This tool will calculate how easily your password can be cracked by a modern computer. Try putting in the password mentioned above, and the passphrase mentioned above, and see the difference in how long it will take to get hacked. Try your own passwords! My password right now would take about 2 hundred million years to crack. Note, that this time estimate is for one, single, average computer. When you have thousands of computers at your disposal especially super computers, your password may be cracked much faster than this tool says.

Something else recommended with passwords is that you have a unique password for every site you go to. Use a password manager.

Spam / Phishing

Virus / Trojan / Malware / Ransomware / Spyware

Online Stalking / Bullying

Location sharing

Video / article of Shia Lebuf and his flag

ID Theft & PII

Social Media

Scams & Online Shopping

Addictions (Porn, Gaming, Gambling)

Importance of Data Security (1:32)

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