E-Learning  

Cyber Safety Project: Blog

This week I have included an excerpt from the Cyber Safety Project's blog which covers information about how to keep our personal information safe online. 

This is a really important thing for our students and parents to know about, especially now that we have 1:1 Chromebooks across the school which are also being used at home.

How To Protect Your Personal Information Online

The internet has become the world’s first stop for accessing knowledge, exchanging ideas and sharing information with people from all over the world. Over time our digital footprint (the things we say and do online) paints a very detailed picture of our real life identity. As we communicate across multiple platforms to learn, work, connect and play we leave a trail of identifying and personal information. There is a risk that the information and content you share, may fall into the hands of strangers. 

Doxing

To dox refers to the process of gathering and publicly broadcasting personal or identifying information on the internet, typically with malicious intent. This information may be collected explicitly by someone searching through a profile, where a user has voluntarily shared these details on a public or private site, or implicitly through posts, comments and imagery that our followers may find. The term “doxing” is effectively “document dropping” which means to retrieve documents/documentation about a particular person or company in order to learn more about them or build a profile of details that could be one day used against them for benefit.

How does doxing occur?

The internet is the world's largest information repository. In its early stages, only tech-savvy individuals could publish online. With social networking and publishing tools so easy to access today, many individuals turn to the internet to connect with others and curate information to those who follow them. This has opened up a space for people to share small (or large) pieces of information about themselves. We can learn a lot about an individual by collating the details which paint a full picture about someone to the point of even predicting future behaviours. Here are just a few ways your personal identifiable information may be indirectly be given away online:

• Have you posted a photo of yourself at locations you frequent regularly?
• Have you shared a photo in a school, work or club uniform?
• Do your friends wish you happy birthday on social media?

Read the whole article by clicking the button below.

Wil Marks

E-Learning Leader