Week 12: Evaluation & Conclusion

SO. FINALLY.


We have come to end of the 125 blogposts!!!


It would be lying to myself should I say that these posts have been draining me out, but actually mind wrecking as well. The amount of effort put into each and every single posts, is absolutely tiring.

Throughout the entire course of lessons, blogposts and classes in school, I cannot help but admit that I have enjoyed myself thoroughly, and no amount of joy can surmount my emotions into words. But the end has come, and looking back....

I have actually put in the effort to continously update my blog with the required posts every week, and it has been nothing less than fulfilling learning and reading up more on the different aspects of internet.

There is a big influence of technique on our daily life. Electronic devices, multimedia and computers are things we have to deal with everyday.

Especially the Internet is becoming more and more important for nearly everybody as it is one of the newest and most forward-looking media and surely “the” medium of the future.

Therefore we thought that it would be necessary to think about some good and bad aspects of how this medium influences us, what impacts it has on our social behaviour and what the future will look like.

The Internet changed our life enormously, there is no doubt about that. There are many advantages of the Internet that show you the importance of this new medium. What I want to say is that Internet changed our life in a positive way.

First we have to make a differentiation concerning the usage. You can use the Internet at home for personal or you at work for professional usage. Let’s come to the first. To spend a part of our day on the Internet is for many people quite normal. They use this kind of medium to get information about all kinds topics. Maybe some of them are interested in chatting, probably they are members of a community. Whatever you are looking for, you will find it. Even if you want to have very specific information, you will find it in a short time. Normally, you often have to send a letter, than you have to wait for the reception of the reply, or you have to make some telephone calls and so on. In any case, the traditional way is the longer one. To put your own information on the Internet is also possible. Create your own homepage, tell other users about your interests, what you want, that’s no problem at all.

As we all know, software costs a lot, if you buy it legal. Free software, free music is available on the Internet. You just have to download the program, the mp3-file or whatever and that’s it. Why do you want to pay more as you need to? Special websites are created just to give you the newest programs, or to tell you where you can get it from. Napster might actually be the most famous one.

The computer is a fix part of every modern office and the greatest part has also an access to the Internet. Companies already present their products, their services on the Internet and so they get more flexible.

The next advantage I want to mention is the faster development. Many universities and research institutions are also linked. They are able to exchange experiences, novelties and often they start new projects together. If they are linked, they can save time and money.

Especially at the business sector knowledge is power. If you are the leader of a product, of a technology or just of an idea you are able to make a lot of money. To get into this position, the Internet can play an essential part. Companies all over the world are online. If you want, it is no problem for you to exchange experiences, you will hear new things, you will see some facts from another point of view. For this reason you will find new solutions, new ways to go, so take this chance!

“Learning by doing”, everybody knows this phrase and its still an essential part concerning the Internet. Children also use the Internet, most of the time they will “play” over the Internet, but they learn to work with the computer. There is only one way to learn something, you have to do it. Even it’s the first contact with the computer, after a few minutes the person will know that the computer-mouse is no animal running on the monitor. He or she learns to write on the keyboard, to navigate, to open and close programs, to save data... within hours. Try to do that on a normal computer course for beginners, you will need more time and the most important fact, it’s not as funny as surfing on the Internet and so they participants are less motivated.

Let’s change over to another positive effect of the Internet.

In any case, everybody’s private situation is different. For many women their own children are the main reason for staying at home. Nowadays this won’t be a problem any more, you can do work on your computer at home, called tele-working. Also men take this opportunity to work at home. What are the consequences, the advantages of tele-working? Sure, if you have a family, you can spend more time at home, probably you can spend more time with your children. Next is, that you can organize every day in the way you want to. Meetings at the company are reduced to a minimum. Tele-working is also an advantage for the owner of the company. Official studies substantiate that people who work at home are more motivated than their colleagues at the office. .

You see, the Internet is really a very positive medium. Use the Internet and discover the advantages of this new, forward-looking medium!

 

Markus Temmel

Another advantage of the internet is that you can join a community.

You can create new social contacts all over the world, which you could not do so easy without the internet.

Such communities can also help people who can not go out to find friends in the real life because they are disabled. Therefore they can chat with other people via the internet. Sometimes it is also easier for people, who are afraid to look into the other’s face while talking, to chat with a person that they do not know. There is something between them which makes it easier for them to communicate. It also does not matter if you have a terrible appearance because you can pretend to be whatever you want. You can also change your gender and your age to talk about topics which you do not normally do.

However, there are no time and place limitations and there are no boundaries, both geographical and political. You can chat with people in Australia and you have freedom of your mind in a way.

Moreover the internet is much cheaper than the real life, e.g. phoning a friend in Australia costs more than to chat with him.

From my point of view the e-mail has replaced the traditional letter. You do not have to buy stamps anymore and it is much faster and also for free. You can also add files to your E-mail and that’s why a big data transfer is possible. Therefore you do not have to send disks with information around the world anymore and you have your information in a digital way.

Another free service of the internet is sending SMS. You can save a lot of money if you do not send it with your mobile phone especially from Austria to America. You also have the opportunity to register as a user. Then you can use more things, e.g. sending E-postcards, I-messages (messages between registered users), and lead an address book.

You can also place your digital photos in the internet. With a password and a login name your friends in America can look at your photos without sending them to them.

Another important part is online gaming. You can play with people from all over the world and share your knowledge. In my opinion it’s more exiting to play with friends than playing alone.

Additionally, another big advantage of the internet is the easy access to information. Online reference books and dictionaries replace the way to the bookshop or to the library. It is again cheaper to search for information in the internet than to buy a book, that is old after one year. In the internet a lot of information is renewed and up to date. You can also find information which is very new and a book does not exist yet.

Moreover you can read the daily newspapers from all over the world, sometimes for free. You do not have to buy them anymore. In addition, most newspaper sites have an archive in which you can search for old articles.

However, the internet is also a big “advertising company”. A lot of enterprises have a homepage with ads and support opportunities. On some of them you can order products online. Then you do not have to go to the city anymore. You avoid waiting in front of the cash because of a long queue.

Moreover, you can get the newest stock exchange courses because the stock exchange in the Internet is always the most current one. You also have the ability to tell the computer to buy shares when the course is down.

Besides you can learn with the internet. CBTs (Computer Based Training) already exist but you can also join an internet course with other members.

Furthermore you can hold videoconferences which means that e.g. your teacher is sitting in his office in America and teaching you in Austria.

This is very important in the medical sector because doctors from all over the world can join an operation. So specialists can give tips and help other doctors to complete the operation successfully. The patient has not to wait until a specialist will come from America.

But this is only available because of the internet 2 which is much faster.

The internet is a database full of information and offers us a lot of services, sometimes for free. This makes our life easier and sometimes also cheaper.

All in all I think that the internet is very useful especially for students.

 

Martina Theuermann

Clicking on the Internet-Button is getting more and more thrilling nowadays. Sometimes it is a real adventure not being sure if you have downloaded a virus or if it is only a hoax. You even cannot be sure to be alone if you are alone. Is there someone else working on my computer or is it only me? To have more security you have to install a firewall, buy anti-virus-programmes and update them regularly. So you have to spend much money only for preventing a virus-caused breakdown or hacker-attacks. It is annoying not being sure if the money you have spent will prevent all those things or if there is already a new virus and a new way hacking into computers. This is no more an investment into security it is a steady consumption which will not end. Some people even have to take up a loan to buy a computer. They are forced to buy one. Otherwise they maybe would not be able to stay in their job. What will the poor people do? They will be rarely informed about news and the space between rich and poor will become bigger and bigger.

Having downloaded the latest anti-virus-program it will not prevent meeting bad people on the internet. If you chat with someone you cannot be sure about the truth of his/her words. Most people cheat emotions, cheat about their appearance, age, job. That can be funny but if you want to meet someone talking to each other seriously it can be hard to do so. Is it a man, is it a woman or is it someone I already know? You never can be sure. Is that something on the other side already hacking into my computer reading personal information? If you get to a web site of a bank – is it a real bank or only a faked one? There have to be some signs which identify an original website reliably. How can I be sure if I want to buy something on the web and send my credit card-number that nobody will read it?

Imagine the following scene: You are surfing through the internet and suddenly – you are just downloading the latest screensaver of Verona Feldbusch – the whole internet breaks down. What would you do? Trying to build your own internet? Worrying about the lack of Verona? Sitting in front of the computer waiting for hours and looking into a black screen? Seriously, what would happen? I think most of the people would wait an hour or longer. Some people would stop existing because they have no real life. They only exist on the internet with their avatars in the chat rooms. They have given up reality for cyberspace. It is more practical for them because they do not need to ask someone to meet someone. The other one is just on the other end. Seriously speaking, I think people would not be glad about having to get out of their rooms. They feel uncomfortable about leaving their beloved computer. They do not know what to do. I think many even do not know any more how a book looks like or a typewriter. Besides losing our social abilities we are also losing our every-day-abilities. The computer is a nanny, a dictionary, an information centre, a job, a shopping centre. Nobody has to know anything about everyday business because the computer does it for us.

Internet user are becoming younger and younger. For children it is no problem to work with a computer. They just accept "him" as partner. But what do the older people do? Some even do not know how to switch the computer on. I know some people who are afraid of the computer. They think everything they do is wrong and the computer is breaking down on purpose. For these people the computer is already too complex. There has to be something like a computer for beginners. Otherwise there will always be some people who do not want to know how to use the computer because there is too much to know about it.

All in all, this 125 module has been nothing short of interesting and fulfilling, from teaching me about internet and politics to how the internet impacts our life in so many different aspects. I'm quite sure this module would serve as an important cause to me in my future endeavours, and I wish nothing but the best for Prof Abel Choy! :) 

Week 11a&11b: Internet and Journalism

It’s not just the over-riding pessimism of both of these pieces that bothers me. It’s the failure to appreciate that the complaints they have are the same ones that have been made about journalism for decades — combined with the unrestrained longing for some mythical golden age of journalism.


In his piece, Sessions says that he used to be an optimist about the internet, that he rarely read the printed paper or magazines and always felt more at home with digital media because of its “immediacy” and freedom, and a willingness to evolve. But the promise of the web has turned sour, he argues, and the forces unleashed by the rise of Google and Facebook have turned a once-innovative marketplace into what the former writer (now doing his doctorate in modern European history) calls an undifferentiated mass of clickbait and me-too journalism:

Where once the internet media landscape was populated with publications that all had unique visual styles, traffic models, and editorial voices, each one has mission-creeped its way into a version of the same thing: everybody has to cover everything, regardless of whether not they can add any value to the story, and has to scream at you to stand out in the avalanche of “content” gushing out of your feeds.

The internet didn’t invent clickbait.

Sessions’ piece has been tweeted approvingly by many online journalists, who seem to share his feeling that they are “actively making the world a dumber place” (or perhaps they just feel that everyone else is doing that). The internet is bad for writers, Sessions argues later in his essay, because it turns “qualities that should be valued — effort, reflection, revision, editing — into hindrances, and makes the resulting product worth little, both qualitatively and financially.” Good writing is difficult, takes time, and is expensive, he says.


I’m not saying the Patrol magazine co-founder or his fellow critics are wrong. Is there a lot of noise and low-quality writing on the internet? Definitely. Does much of it come from sites that claim to be doing journalism? You bet. Is any of this unique to the internet age? Not even close. Pick any time period within recent human history — especially the ones that were supposed to be a golden age for journalism — and you will find similar complaints.

Newspapers in particular have always been filled with huge quantities of “cynical, unnecessary, mind-numbing, time-wasting content.” As Annalee Nevitz of Gawker’s io9 recently described, newspapers at the turn of the century routinely indulged in shameless clickbait of the highest order, including front-page stories about violent gangs of thieves stealing people’s genitals. Headlines were salacious and in many cases flat-out wrong. Newspapers competed to see who would be the first to print a rumor or some bit of innuendo, especially if it involved a celebrity.

Technology is always seen as negative

Just as Twitter has been criticized by almost everyone (including Sessions) for encouraging a rush of speculation during events like the Boston bombing, and for overwhelming rational thought and reflection, the advent of the telegraph was also seen as a negative force for human understanding, because it transmitted the news too quickly, without giving people time to take the news in. You could quite easily read the excerpt below from an article in the New York Times from 1858 and replace the word “telegraph” with the word “internet.”

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William Randolph Hearst, a giant in the modern media business, was a shameless publicity hound whose newspapers routinely printed half-baked theories and even outright falsehoods in an attempt to attract readers. As BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti is fond of pointing out — for obvious reasons — Henry Booth Luce’s burgeoning empire at Time Inc. started by aggregating the news posted by competitors in order to steal some of their traffic and posted every salacious bit of celebrity gossip or rumor it could get its hands on.

It’s not the worst of times

Even at the time when the Washington Post was producing what many see as the apotheosis of golden-age journalism — the Watergate investigation series by Woodward and Bernstein — it and other newspapers just like it were printing thousands of pages a day filled with trivia and ephemeral nonsense. I haven’t been able to find any, but I have no doubt that newspapers were being criticized for printing nothing but poorly-argued invective and cheap traffic-driving features when Benjamin Franklin was running the Pennsylvania Gazette in the 1700s.


Criticizing BuzzFeed because it does listicles — or VICE News because it covers pop culture, or Gawker because it runs the occasional celebrity-bashing post, or Vox because it did an explainer on Gwyneth Paltrow — is like looking at a newspaper and complaining about the horoscopes, advice columns and comic strips. Where’s all the great journalism? The reality is that for most newspapers, those investigative stories and scoops everyone remembers are a fraction of a percent of the total output, and always have been.

Is this the best of times for journalism? No. But it’s hardly the worst of times either. The fact is that there was no “golden age of journalism.” Journalism has always been a messy and chaotic and venal undertaking in many ways — the internet didn’t invent that. All the web has done is provide us with more ways to produce and distribute both ephemeral nonsense and serious journalism in greater quantities. The good part is that it has also made it easier to find the things we care about. What we choose to do with that power, as always, is up to us.

The web's effect on news reporting is considered the most clear evidence that this is a revolutionary technology: news editors – and in some cases, the governments that they observe – are no longer the gatekeepers to information because costs of distribution have almost completely disappeared. If knowledge is power, the web is the greatest tool in the history of the world.

The process that happens before a story is published has also been transformed. The web has become the go-to point for the globe when it comes to getting information; it's the same for reporters. Online, they find a multiplicity of perspectives and a library of available knowledge that provides the context for stories. Increasingly, the stories are coming from the web.

Emily Bell, director of the Tow Centre for Digital Journalism at Columbia University and former editor of Guardian.co.uk, identifies coverage of the attacks on the World Trade Centre on 11 September 2001 as the incident that foreshadowed how events are covered today. "Linear TV just could not deliver," she says. "People used the web to connect to the experience by watching it in real time on TV and then posting on message boards and forums. They posted bits of information they knew themselves and aggregated it with links from elsewhere. For most, the delivery was crude, but the reporting, linking and sharing nature of news coverage emerged at that moment."

For reporters in Egypt, however, their greatest frustration was not that they were disconnected from the context provided by the network, but that they struggled to get their stories out. In fact, Beaumont found the silence a relief. "The way [Egypt] was reported didn't have all the ifs and buts coming from looking over your shoulder to try to figure out what the world is doing at the moment or who's saying what. You just had the news and the news was happening right in front of you."

More generally, technology has improved the processes of identifying stories that are newsworthy. Feeds from social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter provide a snapshot of events happening around the world from the viewpoint of first-hand witnesses, and blogs and citizen news sources offer analytical perspectives from the ground faster than print or television can provide. Paul Mason, economics editor on BBC2's Newsnight, uses these tools to get an angle on what's happening and what's important. "If you are following 10 key economists on Twitter and some very intelligent blogs," he says, "you can quickly get to where you need to be: the stomach-churning question, 'OK, what do I do to move this story on?'"

None the less, such tools are still only one element of the news-gathering process. This may mean that large organisations appear to break stories days after they've appeared on Twitter. "First-hand witnesses cannot see the big picture," says Yves Eudes, a reporter with French broadsheet Le Monde. "They're not trained to understand whether what they're seeing is relevant to the big picture or to see what really happens. They're trained to see what they want to see. If you only rely on Twitter or Facebook, you might end up howling with the wolves."

Indeed, in 2009, American TV networks found themselves in a very public mess when they reported the "Twitter line" on the story of a killing spree by Major Nidal Malik Hasan at Fort Hood US army base – that the killer had terrorist links. The details turned out to be false.

Eudes's caution does not mean he discounts the value of the tools the web offers its army of citizen journalists; Le Monde was one of the organisations, along with the Guardian, that worked with Julian Assange to publish the WikiLeaks cables last year. "Suddenly, we have all these new competitors that, if they're bold and well-organised, can change the course of news worldwide in a way that was completely unthinkable before the internet," he says. And loose organisations such as Global Voices, a network of international citizen journalists reporting on a global platform about local stories, offer windows on events around the world that are increasingly ignored by local papers.

Ultimately, however, Eudes believes the fundamentals of news-gathering have not been transformed by the web. "I need to know how to write or take a photo and I need to be good at analysis," he says. "Learning how to use tools is different from saying everyone is a reporter. Anyone can make bread, but it's lousy bread. You need to spend time like a true, professional baker to learn to make good bread."

Part of that learning process for newshounds, it seems, involves leaving the web and pounding the pavement for stories. For Beaumont, working from Tahrir Square without web access was a reminder of a purer form of journalism. "You forget that the internet, for all its advantages, is a distraction: you're always wondering whether what you're reading by others matches what you're witnessing yourself. If you don't have to worry about that, you can concentrate on pure observational reporting. Which," he says, "is a pleasure."

A pleasure that can only come from going offline.

Week 10: Internet and Politics

Many argue that without the Internet, Barack Obama never would have won his party's 2008 nomination, much less the presidency. When he entered the race in February 2007, the then-46-year-old Illinois senator had spent very little time in Washington and was considered a long-shot candidate by many. However, the Obama campaign's deft use of technology allowed this relatively young and unknown candidate to connect with millions of voters via social media, including Facebook, Twitter and his own campaign Web site. Perhaps even more significant, the Internet helped the Obama campaign break down many of the financial barriers that are commonly associated with an upstart presidential campaign. For example, people spent more than 14.5 million hours watching official videos that Obama staff placed on YouTube. To run these videos on television for the same amount of time would cost an estimated $47 million. Internet technology also revolutionized campaign fundraising by making it easy for anyone to donate small amounts, which added up to one of the best-financed campaigns in history. By the time of the election in 2008, Barack Obama's campaign raised more than $600 million.

In addition to changing campaign strategy, the Internet has brought major change to how the public accesses political news and information. Rather than relying on information from the major media, individual voters can simply look up a candidate's voting record online, or even watch videos of speeches the candidate has made. This not only makes information more accessible, but also helps to hold politicians more accountable for their words and actions.

Of course, while the Internet brings greater access to information, there's no guarantee that information found online is true. Some argue that without the standards of professional journalism commonly associated with traditional news sources, unscrupulous bloggers or other sources may promote spurious arguments without fear of consequences. Another concern is that the Internet makes it too easy to deliberately or unintentionally spread outright false information, such as the "Obama's 50 Lies" chain e-mail that spread like wildfire over the Web during the 2008 campaign. On the other hand, while lies spread easily through e-mail, social media and the Web, those same tools have made it much easier for the average person to research, uncover and expose dubious claims on his or her own initiative.

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Week 8&9 Multimedia, VR, AR

What is Multimedia exactly?

The use of computers to present text, graphics, video, animation, and sound in an integrated way. Long touted as the future revolution in computing, multimedia applications were, until the mid-90s, uncommon due to the expensive hardware required. With increases in performance and decreases in price, however, multimedia is now commonplace. Nearly all PCs are capable of displaying video, though the resolution available depends on the power of the computer's video adapter and CPU.

Multimedia

Multimedia is the term used to describe two or more types of media combined into a single package—usually denoting a combination of some or all of the following: video, sound, animation, text, and pictures. Multimedia gives the user the opportunity to influence the presentation of material. The selection and manipulation of various aspects of the presentation material is the interactive aspect of a multimedia presentation. Interactive features could range from a question-and-answer function to choosing from a menu of particular subjects or aspects of a presentation. One application of multimedia, for example, involves presenting the user with a “what if” scenario, in which the choices the user makes affect the outcome of the presentation. This affords the user a degree of control, not unlike directing a motion picture and having the opportunity to make changes to the plot at various junctures.

TYPES OF MEDIA

There are certain types of media used in multimedia presentations, from simple to complex visual and audio devices. Multimedia components are divided into:

• Text. This refers to written documents, the words seen in handouts, powerpoint presentations, Web sites, and reports. One of the most simple types of media, text is also used to communicate the most information and appears in conjunction with visual aids.
• Audio. This is the sounds that often accompany visual presentations. Sound by itself can be used in radio broadcasts or online audio files, but in multimedia presentations audio is used as a complementary media. Sound effects can help make a presentation more memorable, while hearing the main points of information spoken can help listeners focus.
• Still images. Photographs, taken either by digital or analog means, are an important part of multimedia productions. Well-placed visual aids can explain concepts with clarity.
• Animation. Animations are graphics that move, accompanied by audio effects.
• Video. Video media is used to spread interviews, create movies, and post personal updates to communicate business messages. Currently, businesses can use videos online or create CDs to spread for instructional use within their company.
• Interactivity . The newest form of multimedia, interactivity, is a computer-based tool which allows users to choose to learn different parts of information on their own terms. By highlighting or choosing links and sections, users can manipulate the information environment, examining whatever knowledge is important to them.

USES OF MULTIMEDIA

Multimedia devices have an almost innumerable variety of applications. They are used in home-entertainment systems and can be extremely powerful educational tools. Educators, for example, have been exceptionally creative in combining some of the exciting elements of video-game

applications with select features of educational material. By doing this, the concept of “edutainment” was created. The goal of using the multimedia edutainment approach is to entertain the user so effectively that the user remains unaware that he or she is actually learning in the process.

Multimedia can also offer critical services in the business world. While information can certainly be conveyed adequately by the singular use of still pictures, video, film, audio, or text, multimedia potentially multiplies the degree of effectiveness, in no small part due to the added entertainment value and the extent to which the viewers feel a part of the action. Such benefits can't easily be matched by the application of a singular medium. The effectiveness of teaching, selling, informing, entertaining, promoting, and presenting are all dependent upon one factor: the ability of the presented material to hold the attention of the desired audience. A dynamic multimedia presentation can usually be more effective than earlier methods at accomplishing this task with an audience that was raised on television and motion pictures. The computerized multimedia presentation offers the added benefit of cost-effective flexibility, allowing easy editing of the basic materials in order to tailor them to specific target audiences.

Training, informational and promotional materials, sales presentations, and point-of-sale displays that allow for customer interaction and communication both within and outside the organization are all common applications of multimedia in the business world. Multimedia presentations for many such applications can be highly portable, particularly in the cases of the CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, and videotape. The equipment required to produce these presentations is relatively commonplace or otherwise easy to access.

Perhaps the vanguard application of multimedia is virtual reality, a combination of video, stereo, and computer graphics that attempts to create an interactive three-dimensional environment that immerses the user within the simulation. Virtual reality has been employed in a wide range of practical applications: to train military troops, to streamline manufacturing and architectural design processes, to create simulated test environments for industry, and as a form of public entertainment.

One should still keep in mind, however, that even if rendered in a highly advanced multimedia format, an ineffectual presentation is still an ineffectual presentation. One should remain focused on the message being conveyed while shaping the choice and use of materials in accordance with that message.

The key to augmented reality is the software. Augmented reality programs are written in special 3D augmented reality programs such as D'Fusion,  Unifye Viewer or FLARToolKit.  These programs allow the developer to tie animation or contextual digital information in the computer program to an augmented reality "marker" in the real world. 

The end user must download a software application (app) or browser plug-in in order to experience augmented reality. Most AR applications are built in Flash or Shockwave and require a webcam program to deliver the information in the marker to the computer. The marker, which is sometimes called a target, might be a barcode or simple series of geometric shapes. When the computer's AR app or browser plug-in receives the digital information contained in the marker, it begins to execute the code for the augmented reality program. 

AR applications for smartphones include global positioning system (GPS) to pinpoint the user's location and its compass to detect device orientation. Sophisticated AR programs used by the military for training may include machine vision, object recognition and gesture recognition technologies.

Hallmark Cards, Inc., is using AR in their line of webcam greeting cards. The marker is on the card. In order to view the animation, the end user has to visit the Hallmark website and download a small software program for that specific card. 

1. Virtual Reality (VR), sometimes referred to as immersive multimedia, is a computer-simulated environment that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world or imagined worlds. Virtual realitycan recreate sensory experiences, which include virtual taste, sight, smell, sound, touch, etc.

Video on Multimedia: 

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

Week 7: Internet Security/Internet Insecurity

Internet security is a tree branch of computer security specifically related to the Internet, often involving browser security but also network security on a more general level as it applies to other applications or operating systems on a whole. Its objective is to establish rules and measures to use against attacks over the Internet.The Internet represents an insecure channel for exchanging information leading to a high risk of intrusion or fraud, such as phishing.Different methods have been used to protect the transfer of data, including encryption.

Network layer security

TCP/IP which stands for Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP) aka Internet protocol suite can be made secure with the help of cryptographic methods and protocols. These protocols include Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), succeeded by Transport Layer Security (TLS) for web traffic, Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) for email, and IPsec for the network layer security.

Internet Protocol Security (IPsec)

Main article: IPsec

This protocol is designed to protect communication in a secure manner using TCP/IP aka Internet protocol suite. It is a set of security extensions developed by the Internet Task force IETF, and it provides security and authentication at the IP layer by transforming data using encryption. Two main types of transformation that form the basis of IPsec: the Authentication Header (AH) and ESP. These two protocols provide data integrity, data origin authentication, and anti-replay service. These protocols can be used alone or in combination to provide the desired set of security services for the Internet Protocol (IP) layer.

The basic components of the IPsec security architecture are described in terms of the following functionalities:

• Security protocols for AH and ESP
• Security association for policy management and traffic processing
• Manual and automatic key management for the internet key exchange (IKE)
• Algorithms for authentication and encryption

The set of security services provided at the IP layer includes access control, data origin integrity, protection against replays, and confidentiality. The algorithm allows these sets to work independently without affecting other parts of the implementation. The IPsec implementation is operated in a host or security gateway environment giving protection to IP traffic.

Security token

Some online sites offer customers the ability to use a six-digit code which randomly changes every 30–60 seconds on a security token. The keys on the security token have built in mathematical computations and manipulate numbers based on the current time built into the device. This means that every thirty seconds there is only a certain array of numbers possible which would be correct to validate access to the online account. The website that the user is logging into would be made aware of that devices' serial number and would know the computation and correct time built into the device to verify that the number given is indeed one of the handful of six-digit numbers that works in that given 30-60 second cycle. After 30–60 seconds the device will present a new random six-digit number which can log into the website.

When Tim Berners-Lee was designing the technology that has transformed our world, he looked for a noun that would describe what he had in mind. The one he eventually settled on was "web", which is how the world wide web got its name.

To its inventor, the noun must have seemed perfectly apposite: it described the intricate, organic linking of sites and pages that he had in mind. But "web" has other, metaphorical, connotations. Webs are things that spiders weave with the aim of capturing prey. And if you want a metaphor for thinking about where we are now with networked technology, here's one to ponder.

Imagine a gigantic, global web in which are trapped upwards of two billion flies. Most of those unfortunate creatures don't know – yet – that they are trapped. After all, they wandered cheerfully, willingly, into the web. Some of them even imagine that they could escape if they wanted to.

We are those insects. The only way of escaping our predicament is to renounce the world in the way that Trappist monks once did. Since we're not going to do that, we have to face the reality: we're trapped in a system in which everything we do is monitored and logged and in which privacy is a thing of the past. Everything that you do with modern communications equipment leaves a digital trail. And this trail is followed assiduously not just by giant corporations, but also by governments and their security services – as vividly illustrated by the revelations of Edward Snowden.

What's astonishing is how unconcerned many people appear to be about this. Is it because they are unaware of the extent and comprehensiveness of the surveillance? Or is it some weird manifestation of Stockholm syndrome – that strange condition in which prisoners exhibit positive feelings towards their captors? What we've learned above all from the Snowden leaks is that the scale and capability of the NSA surveillance are much greater than anyone imagined. Most people had assumed that most non-encrypted communications were vulnerable and some speculated that some encrypted communications (eg Skype) had a hidden backdoor for the NSA. But nobody realised that, as the latest revelations showed, allthe encryption technologies routinely used to protect online transactions (https, SSL, VPN and 4G encryption), plus anything going through Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Yahoo, have been cracked.

What this means is that no form of electronic communication handled by commercial companies can now be assumed to be secure. In that sense, the NSA has really fouled the nest of the US internet industry . And it is even suspected that about 90% of communications routed through the TOR network are using encryption that may also have been hacked by the NSA. What can you do if you're someone who feels uneasy about being caught in this web? The honest answer is that there's no comprehensive solution: if you are going to use telephones (mobile or landline) and theinternet then you are going to leave a trail. But there are things you can do to make your communications less insecure and your trail harder to follow. Here are 10 ideas you might consider.

1 Email

Rethink your email setup. Assume that all "free" email and webmail services (Gmail etc) are suspect. Be prepared to pay for a service, such as Fastmail,that is not based in the US – though some of its servers are in New York with backups in Norway. (My hunch is that more non-US email services will appear as entrepreneurs spot the business opportunity created by the Snowden revelations.) It would also be worth checking that your organisation has not quietly outsourced its email and IT systems to Google or Microsoft – as many UK organisations (including newspapers and universities) have.

The real difficulty with email is that while there are ways of keeping the content of messages private (see encryption), the "metadata" that goes with the message (the "envelope", as it were) can be very revealing, and there's no way of encrypting that because its needed by the internet routing system and is available to most security services without a warrant.

2 Encryption

Encryption used to be the sole province of geeks and mathematicians, but a lot has changed in recent years. In particular, various publicly available tools have taken the rocket science out of encrypting (and decrypting) email and files. GPG for Mail, for example, is an open source plug-in for the Apple Mail program that makes it easy to encrypt, decrypt, sign and verify emails using the OpenPGP standard. And for protecting files, newer versions of Apple's OS X operating system come with FileVault, a program that encrypts the hard drive of a computer. Those running Microsoft Windows have a similar program. This software will scramble your data, but won't protect you from government authorities demanding your encryption key under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000), which is why some aficionados recommend TrueCrypt, a program with some very interesting facilities, which might have been useful toDavid Miranda.

3 Web browsing

Since browsing is probably what internet users do most, it's worth taking browser security and privacy seriously. If you're unhappy that your clickstream (the log of the sites you visit) is in effect public property as far as the security services are concerned, you might consider using freely available tools such as Tor Browser to obscure your clickstream. And to protect yourself against the amazingly brazen efforts by commercial companies to track your online behaviour you should, at the very minimum, configure your browser so that it repels many of these would-be boarders.

4 Cloud services

The message of the Snowden revelations is that you should avoid all cloud services (Dropbox, iCloud, Evernote, etc) that are based in the US, the UK, France and other jurisdictions known to be tolerant of NSA-style snooping. Your working assumption should be that anything stored on such systems is potentially accessible by others. And if you must entrust data to them, make sure it's encrypted.

5 File storage and archiving

An option that an increasing numbers of people are exploring is running their own personal cloud service using products such as PogoPlug andTransporter that provide Dropbox-type facilities, but on internet connected drives that you own and control. And if you carry around confidential data on a USB stick, make sure it's encrypted using TrueCrypt.

6 Social networking

Delete your Facebook account. Why do the CIA's work for it? And if you must use it, don't put your date of birth on your profile. Why give identity thieves an even break? And remember that, no matter what your privacy settings, you don't have control over information about you that is posted by your "friends".

7 Location data

Avoid using services such as FourSquare that require location information.

8 Wireless services

Have Bluetooth off by default in all your mobile devices. Only switch it on when you explicitly need to use it. Otherwise you'll find that even a dustbin can snoop on it. Similarly, beware of using open wifi in public places. At the very minimum, make sure that any site you interact with uses HTTPS rather than unencrypted HTTP connections. If you don't then anyone nearby can use Firesheep to see everything you're doing.

9 Personal security

Forget password, think passphrase – ie a meaningless sentence that you will remember – and do some transformations on it (first and third letters of every word maybe) so that you can generate a stronger password from it every time. Or use a password-management app like LastPass or1Password. And if a service offers multi-factor authentication, make use of it.

10 Search engines

All the big search engines track your search history and build profiles on you to serve you personalised results based on your search history. if you want to escape from this "filter bubble" you need to switch to a search engine that does not track your inquiries. The most obvious one is the bizarrely named but quite effective DuckDuckGo.

Video on internet security:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3IbBzujtDc