Unit 10

Lesson 3

1.Which of the following pieces of information would you consider to be “private” or "personal", as in you wouldn't want it shared with just anyone.

1. Your full name: Personal

2. Your social security number: Private

3. Your favorite musician / band: Personal

4. A picture of your face: Personal

5. Your fingerprint: Private

6. Your birthdate: Personal

7. Your address: Private

8. Where you go after school: Personal

9. Your phone number: Personal

10. Your medical history: Private

11. Your racial / ethnic identity: Personal

12. A list of your best friends: Personal

13. A list of everything you've bought this month: Private

14. A recording of your voice: Private

15. Your IP address: Private

16. A video of you singing a song: Private

17. Your academic history / report card: Private

18. The town or city you live in: Personal

Lesson 4

1.What are the benefits of the technology? The benefits of facial recognition technology are that it has efficient security, improved accuracy, and easier integration.

2.What does it make more convenient / fun? Facial recognition technology makes payments, security, any form of confirmation, and showing identity all more convenient.

3.What are the privacy concerns that arise? Unlike many other forms of data, faces cannot be encrypted. Because of this some privacy concerns that arise are data breaches involving facial recognition which increase the potential for identity theft, stalking, and harassment.

4.Why would governments or businesses be interested in this technology? Federal and state governments are turning to facial recognition technology to ensure that people accessing services are who they say they are.

5.What kind of data is being collected and shared? A record of all the places a person uses their phone.

6.Who is the “third party” in this situation? The cell service provider is the "third party" in this situation.

7.Why is this a tradeoff between privacy and security? Because if one is entitled to their privacy, then the overall security and potential catching of criminals could be diminished.

Lesson 6

1.Have you ever received an email or a text message that looked suspicious? Have you ever been unsure if you should open the message or click on a link? Yes, this has certainly happened to me before. In the past, I have received multiple text messages and even emails with links that have looked extremely suspicious, and in these situation, I have most definitely been unsure as to whether I should open the messages and reply or click on the links that have been emailed to me.

2.What are the things that made you suspicious? The things that made me suspicious were that I had gotten a text message from a caller whom I did not have a contact saved for in which that caller's phone number showed above their blank profile photo. As for when I had received suspicious emails, the thing that caused my suspicion to arise was the fact that again the person who sent me the email was someone I had never heard of nor ever talked to. 

Lesson 7

1.What information does Equifax store? Equifax stores one's credit information which includes the types of accounts, the date those accounts were opened, your credit limit or loan amount, current balances on the accounts, and payment history.

2.Why should I care? You should care because the information that is stores also includes private data like social security numbers and whether or not you pay your bills on time which are all things that you should be concerned about.

3.As a computing innovation, what are the benefits of Equifax? A benefit of Equifax is the fact that companies are able to use data to make decisions when deciding who to lend money to or how much a person can be trusted to pay back a loan. With this system, we can purchase large items on loan like cars or houses, which would be out of reach for many people if they had to pay outright.

4.What are the potential harms? A harm of Equifax is the fact that decisions made are not always fair or equitable. In addition, sometimes information is incorrect and difficult to get changed, and a lot of trust is put in a small number of companies who are making a profit making these decisions.

5.What are the security risks? The security Risks are that the data that Equifax stores can be hacked and distributed for malicious purposes. With the personal information that Equifax stores, hackers can commit identity theft and make purchases, drain bank accounts, or ruin people's financial history.

6.What rules or regulations would you recommend be put in place to control how data is collected and shared? I would recommend that rules and regulations that are related to greater transparency and consent be put in place to control how data is currently collected and shared.

7.What role (if any) should the government play? The government should play a pretty big role to help with these regulations, but at the same time they shouldn't be overwhelmingly involved as well.

Lesson 9

1.How does the widget work? What steps would you take to crack the code? The widget works by giving you a keyboard of letters corresponding to A through Z. You have to interact and play with the given keyboard and left text to crack the code.

2.What is the difference between symmetric encryption and asymmetric (public key) encryption? The main difference between symmetric encryption and asymmetric encryption is that symmetric encryption uses the same key to encrypt and decrypt data while asymmetric encryption uses a pair of keys which are a public key to encrypt data and a private key to decrypt information.

Screenshot of widget above

Lesson 10

1.What strategies do you use when creating a good password? The strategies I use when creating strong passwords include utilizing an array of not only letters, but also numbers, signs, and special characters as the more variance, the harder a password is to crack. In addition, I make sure that the password isn't short because the longer it is, the more difficult it is to guess. And finally I make sure that the password isn't an obvious pattern either (for example: abc123), as these can be deciphered easily as well.

2.What are the problems with this system? How could it be hacked? The problem with this is that who ever with unrestricted access that is wanting to get through, can easily get through with just one authentication step, This can be hacked easily as all the hacker has to do is find out one's password.

3.Why is this a better system than Single Factor Authentication? What are the challenges with this system? This is a better system than Single Factor Authentication as with this model it is much harder to be hacked due to their being more security layers. The challenges with this system though are the fact that it can be too much work and sometimes inconvenient to tend to a second authenticator each time when trying to just do your routine activity.

4.Is it worth any of risks? The inconvenient risks and the risk of if something happens to one of your authenticators, you can't access what you want to are definitely worth having. The chances of your phone getting lost or your fingerprint getting severed for example are very rare and any inconvenience can be managed if it means that your security gets reinforced tenfold by each authenticator.

5.How can you protect your device from computer viruses? You can protect your device from computer viruses by installing antivirus software and keeping it up to date, avoiding suspicious emails and links, and by also not downloading software from unknown sources.

6.Discuss with a partner how you plan to protect your data. I plan to protect my data by using strong passwords, enabling multi-factor authentication, using encryption, backing up my data regularly, and by taking all needed measures to protect my data storing device from any computer viruses.