Do Debit Cards Make the Internet More Dangerous?

A new economic study shows that switching people from paper welfare checks to electronic debit cards is linked to a drop in assaults, burglaries, and robberies. Of course, that is good news, but because of the Law of Unintended Consequences, there are other ramifications. Instead of violent person-to-person crimes, skilled hackers are increasingly probing corporations and individuals for gaps in security. A robust industry, generating at least billions of dollars a year, has grown up around hacking. And, the more we move away from cash, the more vulnerable to these attacks we become.

Is Social Media the Death Knell for High School Dances?

In an opinion piece on the Business Insider site, Caroline Moss outlines how school dances may be the latest victim of social media. Citing high schools in Westchester as an example, she cites dwindling attendance at and outright cancellations of school dances at many suburban schools. So, where are the kids and what are they doing on a Saturday night?  Everyone seems to want to stay home with his or her phone texting, Facebook messaging, or Snapchatting each other, several students interviewed by Moss claim. Her premise for predicting the demise of school dances?  Technology has allowed teenagers to be more independent, with greater access to one another — unsupervised by adults — than the students of decades past ever had – with no more need for the kind of connections made in the school gym. Is that true where you are?

Is Privacy Going to Become a Luxury?

As we pay less and less for our technology – browsers, mail programs, apps and more – the revenue to create and operate them has to come from somewhere else – the mining and sale of our personal data. Consider Google, which scans what you write in Gmail to offer advertisers a chance to promote their items based on your missives. Or a visit to an online news site where your data is secretly auctioned and sold before the page loads. Or Facebook, which allows marketers to turn your status updates into ads for their products.

Maybe you aren’t bothered by all of this, after all, as many people say to me, “what have I got to hide?” Keep in mind, though, that data is not only used for advertising. Your data could mean you are offered a different price for goods based on your personal information. Data is also used to provide different search results to different people based on their political interests. Recently, it was revealed that the British government has intercepted and archived (with no notification) still images from millions of Yahoo webcam chats around the world, whether or not the participants were suspected of wrongdoing.

But, buying privacy – software that provides protection services – isn’t cheap or easy to use. Those kinds of tools are discussed on a regular basis in this blog, but all of us are going to have to start taking our privacy more seriously before they become more wide spread, easier to use, and efficient. But, how much will the various “Big Brothers and Sisters” know about us before then?

With a Judge Or Without a Judge – So Goes Online Privacy

There is a movement in Congress – both houses – to try to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, passed in 1986, which is the most significant law protecting our digital communications. Of course, a lot has changed since 1986, but it is still the law that controls how the government can get hold of your private communications that are stored in “the cloud” — emails, drafts of documents, calendars, medical records, financial records. Right now, the government says it can obtain this stored information, just because it is stored with a third party, without a warrant, instead of just with a subpoena from a prosecutor alone, without a judge.

Back in 1986, Congress had not anticipated the whole storage element concept. In fact, in 1986, email service providers would delete any email that was more than 30 or 60 days old. Congress saw any email stored for more than 180 days as abandoned. They assumed if the email was really important, you’d print it out and put it in your files. Of course, now each of us has years and years of emails stored online.

So now, the privacy movement is seeking a very simple standard, grounded in the U.S. Constitution. Basically it is: If you want my stuff, get a warrant. This movement definitely bears watching, but bottom line: the truth is that everything you (and your kids) do can be tracked.

The Marauder’s Map Comes to Real Life

So far, social media has been all about connecting with people. But, how about an app that can help you avoid those you don’t want to see or communicate with – much like the Marauder’s Map of Harry Potter fame? Meet Cloak, an app that provides an "antisocial" network that harnesses social data from Instagram, Foursquare, and other networks to help you prevent or eliminate chance encounters with individuals – exes, people from gym class, etc. – you or your kids would rather avoid. Is this the wave of the future?

Is Your Router Being Targeted?

So, besides credit card hijacking at retailers, the NSA spying on cellphone calls and email and ad trackers watching your every move online, it appears you may also need to plug any vulnerabilities in your router that will let hackers hijack your browser for their own use, produce fake search results, and download malware to the devices connected to your network. To find some step-by-step instructions on how exactly to do that, take a look at this advice from Kim Komando on the USA Today site.

Understanding the Bully

In discussions of cyberbullying, the one party who is often not analyzed is the child who did the bullying. So, why do children bully and are we labeling children when we call them a bully? An article that looks more in depth at the label bully and how children who bully are at risk of suicide, mental health issues, family violence, and substance abuse appeared recently in the Teen Angst blog of the Psychology Today site. "Words Hurt”, the title of the article, refers not only to the wounds that bullies afflict but the lasting effect the label “bully” can have. One thing the author reminds us of is that bullying is a learned behavior, and behaviors can be changed.

Internet Privacy – A List of Tools

No matter what you think of Edward Snowden, the one thing everyone can agree on is that he has raised our collective awareness of potential digital privacy issues. Some claim that digital privacy is something only the rich are going to be able to afford in the future, but aren’t there some simple things we all can be doing now to protect our digital privacy and that of our children?

To get started with protecting the privacy of you and your children, take a look at this list of simple solutions that you can put in place right now. Browser add-ons like Ghostery can help you see who is tracking you and you can choose whether you want them to or not. Anonymous browsers like DuckDuckGo can help you keep what you search for on the Internet private. Check it out.

Is Your School Struggling To Establish Social Media Guidelines?

Perhaps your school is struggling to establish a set of guidelines for social media, or maybe, you are trying to understand the guidelines your school has set. Either way, checking out the resources in the Edutopia “Creating Social Media Guidelines” feature can help you either guide your school or understand why they have put certain guidelines in place.

The Case for Taking “Tech Breaks”

Having trouble getting your kids to understand the importance of taking a break from all the technology? Have them take a look at "What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains" for a less than four-minute quick explanation of why taking a break helps them pull together and retain all those wonderful things they are finding online and lets them make quantum leaps of understanding and knowledge. And for fun, turn on the captions, and enjoy a secret bonus clip of John Cleese explaining how the brain works. Enjoy more brain related videos from the Five-Minute Film Festival: Learning and the Brainwhile you are at it.