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A lot of people think that hackers are going to steal their data, which they can and do, but truthfully, most people give up their data freely without thinking about it too much. It’s important to be aware of your own personal data and how you choose to share your data with others so that you can keep your data secure and private.

Here are some quick tips to maintain your digital footprint and protect your personal data.

• First, use privacy settings on apps and sites to limit your exposure.
• Review posts that your friends tag you in and address questionable content.
• Delete any old social media accounts you don’t really use.
• Search yourself to see what other people see when they search for you on Google.
• Use strong passwords for every account you have.
• Stay on secure sites by sticking with httpS, not just http…if you see a site that starts with http, it is not a secure site!
• Be sure to monitor your webcam and microphone use and make sure you don’t leave them on when you are not using them.
• Be aware of your location sharing on apps like Find Friends or whenever Google or a site asks if you want to share your location.
• Skim privacy policies and see if anything jumps out that concerns you about how the site or app shares or uses your data.
• Watch for phishing attempts in emails. If someone you don’t know sends you an email that seems odd or sounds too good to be true, don’t click through any links or download any content until you’ve looked into it more.
• Be careful logging into public computers like at a library, for example. Your data is logged on those devices and may not always be wiped to a clean state after you use it.
• Stay up to date on the best web security practices like 2-factor authentication where you have to enter a code that is sent to your phone before you can proceed on an app or site. This code confirms you are who you say you are and not someone trying to pretend to be you!
• If you think your personal data has been compromised, contact your parent or guardian, the company that owns the site or app, and/or a school IT person so you can get help or advice.

All data is shared on the internet via what are called protocols. Protocols for data sharing on the internet are rules and conventions for communication between network devices.

The Internet is a packet-switched system through which digital data is sent by breaking the data into blocks of bits called packets. Packets contain both the data being transmitted and control information, or metadata, that helps route the data. It is only able to work because all machines have agreed to use the same protocols for creating and reading packets. Your computer and any server are able to share data because they use the same protocols. They are agreeing to talk in the same language.

Computer use and the creation of programs have an impact on personal security that can be beneficial and/or harmful.

Beneficial Impacts:

• Instant Communication: You share data whenever you email, make a video call, or post on social media. All of these have made it possible to communicate instantly with others and consume information at a very rapid pace.

• Improved Collaboration: Sharing data enables collaborative problem solving on a very large scale. Foldit is an example of citizen science that harnesses the problem solving capacity from hundreds of thousands of citizens on the internet to solve really complicated problems. Foldit is an online game where players attempt to solve the folding structures of very important proteins. By determining the structures of these proteins, researchers are able to develop vaccines and understand diseases better. Once the foldit game went live on the internet, players were able to produce an accurate structure of an AIDs causing virus in only 10 days. This virus had been unsolved by computer simulations and researchers for 15 years!

• Increased Access to Goods and Services: You share your data whenever you make an online purchase. Sharing data has provided online shopping that has enabled you to buy directly from retailers. You can easily purchase from other people who don’t have the funds to run a physical store. You are able to find the best product at the lowest price, rather than being disadvantaged by location or lack of knowledge because you can view ratings and reviews across all retailers.

• Access to Information: Sharing data allows more access to information. Anyone on the internet can read cutting edge scientific publications now.

• GPS and Location Sharing: GPS has completely changed how you navigate the world. You can leave your home with just your smartphone and you’ll generally have no problem finding the place that you need to be. You share your current location, which is data, and you are provided data around your position such as images and directions.

• Entertainment: When you upload videos to YouTube, you share your data! There are also online gaming communities so you can play games with someone in another country who speaks a different language or you could be playing a video game with hundreds of other players simultaneously. You share things like your location and more with them, as well. When companies like NetFlix and Hulu stream videos to your home TV or device, theres a big exchange of data, too. They share digital content with you and your family must share payment information and device information to allow access.

Do Now

• What are some of the ways you personally have benefitted from data sharing? This could be data you have shared or data that has been shared with you.

For all of the amazing things that data sharing can provide, there are some substantial negative drawbacks as well.

Harmful Impacts:

• Access to Confidential Information: The website called Wikileaks posts classified information that either governments or corporations are trying to keep secret. On one hand, this is a good thing because it promotes the transparency of information. It makes it so corporations and the governments cant keep secrets from its citizens. However, there’s potential danger in having classified secrets being public, especially if that information is protecting people from harm or hiding their location purposefully.

• Illegal Sharing/Downloading: Peer-to-peer networks allow people to share content or data that they have on their computers. This is fine if the files are their own creation, but oftentimes shared content is NOT owned by the people sharing it. It’s easier than ever to distribute information or content that is not your own, such as copyrighted works of art or copyrighted software.

• Anonymity: You can tell who internet users are by the data they share. How identifiable should Internet users be? On one hand, anonymity supports equality for all on the Internet. If all users are anonymous, users wont be targeted or discriminated against like for their gender or race, because that information won’t be available. However, having complete anonymity provides opportunities for cyber bullying. If all users are anonymous, no one is accountable for their actions.

Do Now

• Data sharing has affected humans, society, economy, and culture in many ways, both positively AND negatively.
  
  • How has data sharing impacted YOUR life?

Regardless of the positive impacts that certain technologies might have on society, they can also have unintended consequences that have a negative impact on society, law, and ethics. Programmers have a responsibility to make sure that their programs are socially, legally, and ethically acceptable.

A computing professional should:

• Contribute to society and to human well-being, acknowledging that all people are stakeholders in computing.
• Avoid harm.
• Be honest and trustworthy.
• Be fair and take action not to discriminate.
• Respect the work required to produce new ideas, inventions, creative works, and computing artifacts.
• Respect privacy.
• Honor confidentiality.

Remember that knowledge is power as you live with others in this digital world. Use your knowledge of computing for good purposes so you and everyone else can be safe and enjoy the benefits of computing.