Having been in the Cronkite Digital Audience program for the last year, I began to look seriously at my online security.
First taking the course, my professor recommended looking into some small measures we could take to secure ourself online.
We started by looking at all our passwords, Embarrassingly, mine was prety much the same across the whole board, with some variance depending on the password requirements for the website.
So, having to change all that, it lead me to a password manager.
These companies store and auto-generate passwords that streamline having many different passwords.
They also make these password “strong” – a collection of jumbled words, numbers and symbols. While this looks stronger, me reasearch lead me to conclude the benefits are marginal. So, while the passwords manager lead me to get create variance for my many passwords, I didn’t feel secure enough.
This lead us to two factor authentication. This software adds an additional layer of security to our accounts. Using personal knowledge, such as lived experiene, possessions or something inherant about the user, two factor authentication adds an extra step to log in to your account.
The benefits include improved security, flexibility and productivity while also reducing fraud.
While this greatly increased my satisfaction on my online security, frankly some two factor authentications are burdensome. While working with ASU, the new duo mobile extension certainly provides greater security than apples fingerprint system. However, duo mobile relies on the user having their phone on them, which has lead me to be unable to log into my account. Apples fingerprint password system is secure and easily usable on mobile devices, but are rare to see on a laptop/desktop computer.
Fast forward to the end of this semester, to our current module on security.
I have come to actually be a supporter of corporations collecting our data. While I am not technologically literate, people I’ve trusted described the process like this:
“It’s not exactly spying. Unless an entity is looking specifically for you, an actual person isn’t filtering your information. Devices collect information and that’s ran through an algorithm which produced to sponsored content that people worry about.”
While I certainly understand why people might not like that, personally it still doesn’t trouble me. I liked when an ad on something I want to buy came directly to me with a discount added to it. I also didn’t find it troubling that someone had access to my information, nothing I had done online I was too embarrassing.
Working through this course, my ease gradually increased. Until I discussed buying a bike with my mom.
I had called her to tell my bike wasn’t in great shape and that I’d like to work on getting a new one. New searches on google, no searching for bikes on social media, this conversation was the only mention of buying a bike.
The next day, the first sponsored ad was for bikes in the range I wanted to spend.
While I believe certain access we should grant corporation to our data, a line ought to be drawn somewhere,
