How to stay safe from Cybercrime this pandemic — personal guide for the netizen — Introduction (Part 0)
This post is gives an peek into my life and why I am passionate about social media privacy and security.
I was a young working adult when I joined social media. I tried to stay off long enough but then, peer pressure did it! I wanted to check one of colleagues vacation pictures and she told me to join Facebook since she has the album there….it’s been more than a decade but seems like yesterday. Once I was in, I was hooked to the “Likes” and the dopamine rush . I was pretty popular in school and college so I sent hundreds of requests and got connected with almost all of my acquaintances from school and work and everyone in between. Facebook was at its initial stages. It was just say ..around 8-10% of features available now and farmville was super popular those days.
My brother and I would continuously be at loggerheads because I wanted to share the dinner at Hamley’s and he would complain and make a big deal about it. He was a kill-joy. I tried to get away with posting a lot of stuff and he managed to win sometimes convince the elders at home that I should not post our outing pictures.
I loved the new-found attention aka approval I got on Facebook. I was shy at school but I had noteworthy opinions which now I could freely express — in exchange for likes. Or so I thought. Couple of years later, I noticed my time on facebook was affecting my life — general chores would be behind schedule, I’d be sleeping late cos Martha who was my friend’s friend in kindergarten came online and we caught up! I also noticed that the first thing I do when I woke up was facebook and I sort of had to check it like every hour.
I knew something was wrong with me and I had enough of it. So, I decided to detox. I told myself that I was allowed to use facebook once a year to post my birthday picture. So I deactivated it.
We have deaddiction centers for alcoholics and drugs but the biggest group of addicts are social media addicts and have no clue that they are! Let alone try to ask for help.
That’s pretty harsh you may say. But I was on a 1000km flight with facebook, unless I put the brakes real hard, I knew I’d fly off into the chaos of outer space — lose my health, my job and the physical friends I had at that juncture in my life. It was hard and I would look forward to my birthday each year so I could post again. Year after year, the lustre wore off. I finally could have an active facebook profile and resist the need to login. But I left my profile untouched, available for people to look into. (Big mistake!)
Fast forward 10 years, someone made a comment on movies I like in a business meeting. I was shocked. It was nothing offensive, just something about the movie I like which let’s say was probably more childish than what I should be liking for my age. I was wondering how they knew. On further thought, I realized I made a complete fool of myself by sharing more information online than I should.
I was from an IT background and I knew the risks and benefits involved all along. I knew a little about marketing, I knew about cybercrime. However, that knowledge didn’t keep me from doing the crazy stuff I did. More like the doctors who know the dangers of smoking and smoke anyway.
Perhaps I had to know about the why behind the what. For instance, why should I not enter my birthday…instead of ‘Don’t enter your birthday’. Scrolling through my timeline the other day, I was flabbergasted at my stupidity and need for approval. But I’ve learnt my lesson. We do change over time.
Recently I logged into facebook and I found that the scope of information you can share is exponential to what we had. I was alarmed at the way settings were defaulted. And I was alarmed at my brother’s feed. Man…I’ve grown for the better..but he’s been posting more confidential stuff than what I used to post. I wanted to whack him but it’s too late! I set the wrong precedence as an elder sibling when I continuously downplayed the risks just so I could collect my “likes”.
Because of what happened to me and how my business meeting incident changed for the better, I have a passion for writing about Cybersecurity from a ‘why we do what we do’ perspective than just preach to people to do ‘1.2.3.4.’ It gives me a sense of purpose and happiness to know that I’m making a positive difference in people’s lives because of my pain and my industry experience on the subject.
Some people think the internet is a park to take a walk in, a serene park by the lake with swans. But you’re mistaken! It is more dangerous than the most dangerous low-lit alley in the world. And the scariest part is, you won’t even know it when people rob from you. So it’s good that you learn the rules and play by the rules.
Stay tuned for my next post on action items on how to stay safe online
