Author: amprager

I take my security pretty seriously. I used to not care because I thought I was invincible, but then it happened. My laptop got a virus. I don’t know how or when, but it started moving slower, it was harder to pull things up, and then one day it wouldn’t turn on. And it was fairly new. It shouldn’t have happened like that. I had virus protection on it and everything. From that point on, I started using Apple products because I knew they had an added “wall” if you will, against viruses and it was harder for them to get a virus. 

In the article 10 Tips to Avoid Leading Tracks Around the Internet from NY Times, Aaron Soice explains “I don’t like Apple’s phones, their operating systems, or their looks,” wrote Aaron Soice, “but the one thing Apple gets right is valuing your data security. Purely in terms of data, Apple serves you; Google serves you to the sharks.” I like that Apple doesn’t track what I do, I still use extra precautions when I am on my computer like Private browsing just to protect myself. It also stated not to use public WiFi, which I don’t tend to use unless I am absolutely desperate, because that is common knowledge that public WiFi is unsafe, it’s also nice to take a break from the internet and look at the world around you. Another thing I learned from the article is that I will never sign in with Google again. Even though it’s easy at the time, they sell your information and track you through it. 

Apple also has another added security feature for both the phone and computer that I like and don’t like called “Passcode”. It keeps track of your username and passwords for you and with the touch of your fingerprint for facial recognition, you can unlock it and login to any website. I do like it because it’s easy, but if your phone is ever stolen, then someone could easily jailbreak your phone and have access to your data, not a fan. 

A couple of years ago my card was hacked. It was scary, yes, but I was more annoyed than anything because I go through the motions of getting a new card and getting money to pay bills and other things until I got the new card. After that happened, I signed up for Protect My ID through Experian and AAA (it’s free though AAA if you are a member) and it gives me updates on my credit, any fraudulent activity and even monitors the dark web! That is a whole other place that scares me!

There is a lot that we can do to protect ourselves on the internet, we just have to know where to look and what to do. Taking the easy route is, well, easy, but not always safest route and more people should be aware of that. That is how our data is hacked. So save yourself the headache, read up, and protect yourself!

The internet can be a scary place. But I feel that if you follow the rules and know your rights as a citizen, you shouldn’t be scared or be worried about what you are doing on the Internet. I most certainly am not. My personal motto in life is if you feel a tinge of guilt while doing whatever it is you are doing, then maybe you shouldn’t be doing that thing that you are doing. You can apply that to your Internet usage as well.

A couple of things that do have me worried though are the privacy on the Internet, the fact that there hardly is any, and net neutrality.

Privacy is so hard to come by these days and I feel as if everything is out there for the world to see and take advantage of. I like to Google myself every couple of years to check and make sure that I am doing “okay”–meaning I am still who I am, my information isn’t being blasted all over the internet. In the past it has been totally fine, but recently, it was the worst I had ever seen! I saw the usual, Facebook, Twitter, a link to my family’s winery, but then I saw a website called “Check Info” I clicked and I saw my name, the city I lived in and the cities I lived in, in the past, who I was related to, my high school graduation, and other personal information (I hesitated to type what was on there, here in this blog because its information about me, but then I thought it’s already on the WORLD WIDE WEB, why not?). Don’t worry; I am in the process of removing it all. I couldn’t believe it. I had used this article from USA Today to help clear up some of that information from the Internet. I am a pretty private person, as I have said before, I don’t post much about myself, and to have all of that information on display for anyone to have access to is a scary thought.

Another thing that worries me is net neutrality. Right now we have so much freedom with the Internet. It is a good and a bad thing. It has given us so much knowledge and power to create amazing things but everywhere I go I see people staring into their phones instead of having a conversation with others. I don’t what our freedom of the Internet to be taken away. I don’t want to have to pay for faster Internet service or to only be able to go to certain places. I want to have the freedom to keep doing what I am doing and I believe that we all deserve that right. Who are they to say what speed we can and can’t surf the Internet. We already had to deal with that with dial up and that was THE WORST. The sound of dial up was the worst. I would rather have that back than net neutrality if I am being honest…

This week, we are going to be going into a couple of articles that go into both sides of the argument on vaccinations as well as what vaccinations are and some of the different types and what some prevent as defined by science.

VACCINATIONS- WHAT ARE THEY?

This first article is from sciencedirect.com and it defines vaccinations, so what they are, how they came to be and what they help prevent. It even gives a little excerpt of why vaccinations are required when traveling.

“A vaccine against infection is a modified form of a natural immunogen, which may be either the whole pathogen, one of its components, or a toxin. A vaccine does not cause disease when administered but induces the healthy host (the vaccinee) to mount a primary response against epitopes of the modified immunogen and to generate large numbers of memory B and T cells. A primary immune response is all that can be mounted so that, in many cases, the individual becomes sick until antibodies and/or effector T cells can act to clear the attacker.”

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/vaccination

Unvaccinated Children Are Now Barred From Going To School In New York — And Their Anti-Vax Parents Are Really Mad”

This article is about the law that was passed in New York recently. The law “‘prohibits a school from permitting any child to be admitted to such school, or to attend such school, in excess of 14 days without sufficient evidence that the child has received all age appropriate required vaccinations,’ according an official publication from the New York Department of Health, Office of Children and Family Services, and the State Education Department.”

This was brought on due to the fact that 26,217 students claimed to not be vaccinated in the 2017-2018 school year causing the worst measles outbreak the state had seen in decades.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ellievhall/vaccination-school-law-new-york-anti-vaxx-parents

SB276- YouTube

This video from YouTube is about the SB276 bill that was just passed stating that all children need to be vaccinated. In the bill it states that if children experience anaphylactic shock from the vaccinations, then they will be able to receive a medical exemption from receiving the vaccinations. In the video, a mother called multiple doctors offices and was turned down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNNVVCqqVLM&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR1CKdCtl4rG_nE40zyO1Nxu1qZNZu8VRRDLpag0uQYjBSbofIDahquU6o8

It is a bit harder to find anti-vaxx blogs or information on the internet, right now what is mostly in the media is pro-vaccination reports and blogs. But I did find this article from June of this year from the website historyofvaccines.com which gives us all kinds of information about the pros and cons of vaccinations.

The Anti-Vaccine Misinformation You Read on Twitter Probably Came From Russia

This particular article is stating that the misinformation we are getting from Twitter about vaccinations is coming from Russia.

“The highest proportion of anti-vaccine content is generated by accounts with unknown or intermediate bot scores. Although we speculate that this set of accounts contains more sophisticated bots, trolls, and cyborgs, their provenance is ultimately unknown. Therefore, beyond attempting to prevent bots from spreading messages over social media, public health practitioners should focus on combating the messages themselves while not feeding the trolls.

https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/blog/anti-vaccine-russian-trolls

HOW RISKY ARE VACCINES?-YouTube

This short 3-minute video shows and teaches it’s viewers about vaccines and how vaccinations can help people. It also shows how it has helped with eradicating diseases over time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaGndICPT8I

DEBUNKING ANTI-VAXXERS- YouTube

This video is a little bit longer, almost 8- minutes. It goes over the science behind vaccines, most of the claims that anti-vaxxers have made in regards to getting themselves or their children vaccinated and what the vaccines contain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b03U6BYF9L0

Last week I talked about vaccinations and how many people choose to vaccinate their children and many people don’t as well as how there have been many outbreaks (most notably measles) of viruses recently due to the non-vaccination and the ease of these viruses spreading from one person to another. “The United States is experiencing the greatest number of measles cases in a single year in 27 years. Fueling the outbreaks are anti-vaccine groups that have spread misinformation that lowered vaccination rates in vulnerable communities.”

 

This week, I am going to go a little deeper and dive into an article by Marisa Iati that was released earlier today: Gov. Gavin Newsom (D. California) signing a pro- vaccine bill into law this week. It is an article I found on the Washington Post website and it goes into detail about the protest that went on after the bill was signed, by anti-vaccine activists.

 

“California’s bill, SB 276, creates a standardized medical exemption request form to be approved by the state’s public health officer. It also authorizes the health department to review requests for medical exemptions at schools where less than 95 percent of students are vaccinated, at schools that do not report their vaccination rates and from doctors who have written five or more waivers in a given year.”

 

It started off with protesters holding a candlelight vigil with pictures of children who have been hurt or have passed from the vaccinations. The reporter even included an article link of the teen Ethan Lindenburger (which I have also attached) who was vaccinated against his parents’ wishes and testified before congress- which to the reporters knowledge, did know why that was there. Soon after, the “craziness” of the protest began to ensue. Women started to throw what seemed to be used feminine products at senators in honor of the babies who have passed “so their voices can be heard”.

 

Overall, I would give this article an A. I think Marissa did a good job, she linked many sources, the actual bill that was signed off (which I have also linked above just incase you are curious to read or look over it), a link to another article by The Washington Post that was posted earlier this year about Ethan Lindenburger going to congress about vaccinations, and there is also a link for a video about called “200 Years of Vaccine Skepticism: by The Vaccine Project linked in the article as you scroll through just in case you want to know more.

 

*I, personally, am pro-vaccination (sorry if I offended anyone, I don’t mean to). I chose this article and this topic because it is a big topic right now and I wanted to learn more about the other side of the argument. I am curious about the other side as well as learning both sides of the argument was one of our topics a couple of weeks ago in our lecture. I think it is healthy and important that we learn both side of the argument before we make our decision.

Vaccines are a big topic in today’s world. Some speculate that they will do more harm than good. The two articles that I chose, support vaccinations and shows how vaccinations can help children and people by helping to prevent diseases that can easy spread by children and people in public places.

For example, a couple of years ago there was an outbreak of measles at Disneyland (the happiest place on earth was not so happy) and the measles virus was easily spread to many people because of the amount of surface area that visitors touch and the way that visitors interact with each other.

Getting the vaccinations help prevent others from spreading those viruses to others and other then possible getting those viruses which could be very serious causing hospitalization or even death.

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/conversations/downloads/vacsafe-understand-color-office.pdf

https://vaccines.procon.org/

Today we are going to talk about Makeup. Makeup is ALL over the media. Where I started watching it was on YouTube as a way to relax, but that’s totally changed.

I’m going to take it all the way back, to the early 90’s. I’ve always been fascinated with makeup, the looks that were created and that everyone who wore it looked so beautiful! And, hello, they got to color on their face?? What?! I loved watching my grandma put on her makeup. She always used to let me play with it and from a young age she told me to always leave the house looking presentable and never forget to wear lipstick because you never know who you are going to meet. Wise words- it’s true. I never really understood why or wanted to put lipstick on (not for fun also I wasn’t really allowed to wear makeup out of the house until high school) until I was a little older and I realized that pop of color really does make a big difference. Grandma knows what she is talking about. To this day she still asks if I have my lipstick on me whenever I visit her. 

Fast forward to today. I spend some of my free time watching makeup tutorial videos because I LOVE watching them and it’s so interesting to see how others put their makeup on. It started off as a way to relax, because let me tell you, these videos can be VERY relaxing and satisfying, but it turned into a learning experience for me. There are so many different ways people apply makeup and the looks they can create with very little or so much product. People are very creative and very good at coloring in their face, knowing where to put the contour and highlight. Some can even turn themselves into a completely different person! It’s a gift. 

Makeup application tutorial videos have become very popular in the past couple of years across multiple media platforms. They are now not just on YouTube, they have special categories/channels on Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter. Beauty Gurus are becoming influencers and making money off of making these videos that people are liking and sharing with friends and family. They are creating their own line of makeup or their own line of products with a big name brand. It’s providing so much for so many people.

My Media Use:

Recently, I was given the opportunity to go to D23, the Disney convention. Someone had bought me a ticket and I just went for one the one day, so may day mostly consisted of checking the D23 Instagram page for updates on what to do because I had never gone before and I honestly didn’t know where to start or what to do. It was a little overwhelming!

Waking up, I quickly checked Instagram to see if there were any updates and if I had to prepare for anything before heading over to the convention center.

Once at the convention center, we are brought down to the basement, filed into a line to wait. Mind you, it is 5:00 AM. Let me repeat that. FIVE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING. I walk in to see hundreds of people sleeping on the hard ground; they have been there since last night. It reminds me of a disaster shelter.

There are food stations located on both ends. I spot the coffee station and make a beeline for it. As I wait in line, I pull out my phone, (thank god for the cell service down there) I open up Instagram, check the D23 page to see if there are any updates, there aren’t, it’s too early, and go through my feed.

Once I go though Instagram, I pull up Twitter. I recently tweeted, so I had a couple of notifications, check those. Taylor Swift’s new album “Lover” came out, and she is trending and is taking up most of my feed, which is fine, but after reading about that for a while, I close it out, and check Facebook.

The line moves to where we need to go in the convention, so I unfortunately have to run out of the coffee line to get back into the other line with friends. I open Snapchat post an update video in excitement.

 

Throughout the day, I check Instagram, specifically the D23 page for updates, the D23 app, for information on where to go, and Snapchat to post interesting things that I see at the convention, because there were some very creative people, in regards to their costumes, at the convention!

I would rate the Instagram page, @D23, a 10 for the information I received as a consumer. The whole day it gave me accurate information on what they had available to guests of the convention and what I wasn’t able to get to on both their Instagram Stories and the posts they posted on their media site. I would also rate the D23 app an 8 for the information I received. It was accurate, but the instagram for me provided more information because it was easier to navigate