The Teckki Says

The Internet as we know it is more of a concept than a product or service. It is not like the street we see, giving us the ability to point out to a physical road and explain the dangers of it, nor is it something we can tag or place a warning label on to inform us of its hazards. The Internet is a collection of devices, services and interactions, pieces by themselves that are not dangerous, but in combination, can be lethal.

Because of this, information on usage of the Internet is done either through classes, books, mucking through it and workshops, like one I participated in last month. It was full of information that is important both in personal and business matters. The workshop featured information from the Chicago Police Department, and five distinguished technology experts. I will summarize highlight of the workshop in this article.

Chicago Police Officer Charmaine Strong gave a presentation on Internet Security and children. This one was of particular interest to me since I am battling technology-savvy children of my own. One point struck me, however, is that as much attention as Internet Security is getting, the number of officers assigned to Internet Security at CPD is relatively minuscule, roughly five officers devoted to a city of three million. While identity theft takes up the majority of news press and is definitely more prevalent, these are also the officers that handle Internet predators.

I was impressed with the list of acronyms Officer Strong presented as a part of the texting lingo (see this site for lists) kids use to talk to one another. It reminded me of the days when I was a kid, but maturity level of the texting language in some cases should be rated NC-17. Generations of parents have always tried to figure out what their children are saying. The list helps. DYGT (did you get that)?

George Rumsey, of Computer Resource Center, did an excellent job of moderating a panel of four professionals who offered much to the audience in keeping their computing experiences relatively safe. Richard Buchner, of Hyde Park Systems Group, provided an array of tips to those in the Windows computing world. He discussed the seemingly obvious, such as the money scams we get in emails, to the not so obvious, such as getting emails from people we trust, but whose email accounts have been hijacked. Charlie Havens, of Wooded Isle Consultants, discussed the rather lassie-faire attitude that those with Apple computers take towards protecting them from viruses. An interesting statistic he presented was that for Mac computers, there were just under 300 known viruses. He contrasted that to the almost 300,000 know viruses in the Windows PC world. While it is much more likely that Windows PC users would likely encounter a virus, a Mac user is more likely to be infected by one. Havens also had the latest Apple sensation, the iPad, on display. Look for a future review of his experiences with the iPad in a later post.

Jean Pickering, of The Tecktite Group, covered social media. In her comprehensive coverage of the topic, Jean related how the critical mass of Internet users has already embraced social networking media, making it fully mainstream. She stated that more and more businesses and employers are using the media in many ways from marketing to employee background checks. She also gave a counter to the conventional wisdom that nothing lasts forever, saying that once something is posted to the Internet, it never goes away. This certainly gives pause to think about what you post.

A lot of my input complemented the other panelists. However, I believe that web computing can only be made safe to a point. It's like driving. You trust yourself, and implicitly, everyone else on the road. This trust won't necessarily stop accidents, hit and runs and drunk drivers. Today’s Internet, like driving, will always have some element of danger, but we can only be so cautious.

The audience felt that they were given a lot of good information. The panelists always get a lot out of it. Hopefully, everyone is safer and relatively more secure in navigating the Internet.

A special thanks goes out to Richard Buchner, of Hyde Park Systems Group for organizing the event, to Camille Hamilton-Doyle for managing many of the tasks and coordinating the publicity, and to Elizabeth Kirby, principal, as well as staff at Kenwood High School for hosting the event.

I came across an online article about a Facebook fan page allegedly developed by high schoolers at a northern Chicago suburb for the purpose of posting and commenting on malicious gossip. The fan page contained posts that could be considered cyber-bullying, which is against the law in Illinois. Educators were swift in their reaction to this fan page, threatening posters who could be traced as current students with severe discipline, such as suspensions, banishment from events like proms and graduation, and possible expulsion. Criminal charges were also intimated.

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I quickly became a fan of the page in an effort to get more information on a topic I am presenting as part of a panel on Internet Security. What I found was a debate, along with comments, on free speech vs. responsibility. I even found a reporter soliciting material for a television story to be aired that evening. Access, speech, responsibility, and the subject of minors are the topics I want to focus on.

There is no reliable rating system other than the content itself that will keep minors from online sites. Devices, like cellular and smartphones, computers, PDA's, anything that has Internet access, is a channel to the Internet, and we have an appetite to see this technology proliferate to many, many more devices, such as appliances.

Many device makers brag about market penetration. Apple has sold over 30 million iPhones. Google's Android operating system is on millions of devices, and Google itself is the most popular search engine, handling well over 60% of the billions of searches performed daily. From a business standpoint, all of my clients are concerned about traffic and hit counts. How many of us ever stop to think that some of those hits are actually attributed to minors?

I remember the behavior that we displayed as kids. Anyone in school remembers incidents like a kid standing up, another kid sliding that kid's chair backward, and the first kid falls when trying to retake his seat. It always generated a laugh from virtually all but two people - the kid who fell backward, and the teacher. Embarrassment was limited to twenty to thirty other kids. Fast-forward this several decades: this same incident occurs, but someone creates a video using a smartphone with a camera. The event is then uploaded to YouTube, and goes viral. Now, that same incident is viewed by three million people. The naughty nature of kids in general has not changed, but their ability to display bad behavior to a larger audience has.

Kids' concepts of the whole world, even as high schoolers, are limited. Their world is the whole world. Television is the whole world. Their friends are the whole world. Their school is the whole world. But the big, BIG, WHOLE world? It’s almost inconceivable to them. Given that, should we really give them devices that will let them explore the BIG,WHOLE world, despite their limited understanding of it? What happened in the case of the cyber-bullying fan page is that many site posters were making malicious comments. When they got caught, they did what kids do - lie. "Someone hijacked my account and posted my picture." Really? Being kids, they don't understand that when evidence is presented that the IP address matches their cellphone or home computer, claiming that "they still didn’t do it" doesn’t cut it, but then again, they are kids.

If you've ever given your kids the keys to the house, or the keys to the car, didn’t you educate them about the responsibility of those things first, then continually refresh their knowledge, monitor their behavior, and mete out punishment for offenses? Aren’t your kids clear on the rules and the consequences of letting others borrow the house keys, or goofing off while driving? Then why do we give them souped up phones under the guise of safety, with little or no supervision? Why do we give eight-year-old's iPhones, as if they were the latest piece of new designer clothing?

I can guess why we give kids a phone but guard the house and car so carefully - it's because the phone is either cheap or free. We don't value the phone or think a lot about it, because we can afford it. We'll get mad if they lose it, of course, but it can be quickly replaced. Computers, which aren't free, are thought of just as carelessly, because the kids "need it for their education". Do we ever stop to think what other kinds of education they might be getting?

Basically, this is a call to be better parents. Since kids don't understand the scope and reach of their actions, we must intervene and stop giving them devices that are so powerful, inviting the very troubles we see. We have to do more than ask them what's on their phone. Just as we look around the house or car occasionally, checking up on them, we must look at their phones. What do you think would happen if you and your kids switched phones for a day? How about computers? How about playing those games you gave them for Christmas, birthdays or good grades? If they physically left the house, there's a good chance you would know, and would definitely ask them where they have been, but they travel all the world over on a Gameboy, and there is never as much as an accidental interruption.

Kids might cry invasion of privacy or free speech, but since when did they ever get those privileges? How about your right to enjoy services you purchased without having to account for their use to a principal, law enforcement, or a lawyer? How about your right to not lose those services because someone else abused them? How about your right to keep your name out of the newspaper because your kid did something that you are now ashamed of? How about the security of knowing that some 40-year-old is not knocking on your door in the middle of the night, looking for your 12-year-old, whom she met in a chat room while pretending to be 19? How about the right to know where your kid is at all times? I think your rights to these things trump any of their personal concerns.

It's past time to mind the store. I can tell you, you won't catch everything, just like our parents didn't catch everything. But it never meant that they weren't watching.

Every once in a while, I get an email from someone I have never heard of asking if I would put a link to their website address on my website, and in turn, they will place my website address on theirs. I never acknowledge or honor these requests, because in all most all instances, I have no idea who is making the request, nor do I understand just how what they are offering relates in the slightest to what I am doing.

My guess is that they are attempting to fool search engines by emulating popularity. Search engines, like Google and Yahoo, send out automated programs, called web crawlers, all over the web to evaluate each website. Crawlers evaluate websites for the content and links on it. In the case of links, if your web address appears on several other websites, this is seen as your site being popular, because people are linking to it on their sites.

Let’s say, for example, you put out an interesting news release about your organization, that you are writing a blog, and you want to refer to the story on your website. You will link to it. If this story catches on in your blog, perhaps hundreds of other bloggers link to it as well. Search engines will measure this and assign the site of the original article with a higher popularity ranking, which helps the page get closer to the first page of a search.

Since the more links the better, some people decide it is easier to send a million emails to create these cross links. This might think this is a good idea, but it isn’t. What should you do if you are approached by email to do this? Here are some suggestions:

1. Never respond to these emails, even to tell them no thank you. Remember, these are often unsolicited, and if they are spammers, your response could verify the validity of your email address, setting you up to be a spam victim.
2. Don’t click on the links to find out who they are. Many websites contain viruses and malicious software that can infect your system by just visiting the site.
3. Don't do them any favors by adding their links to your site. If it is a malicious site, you could inadvertently subject your own visitors to spam and viruses.
4. Don't take them up the offer. They may or may not hold up their end of the deal.
5. Understand that this is an attempt at fraud. Search engine companies are always looking for fraud, and if your page continually turns up in the results of an unrelated search, the search engine companies may just decide that you are a fraud, and remove you from searches altogether.

Being first on a search appeals to a lot of people, obviously because it is free advertising. However, there are more honest ways to do this. Sending out emails blasts to people you don't know to crosslink sites is not one of those ways.

Later this month (click on graphic to download flyer), I will participate on a panel discussing computer and Internet Security to parents, students and community members. Although I jokingly refer to Internet Security as an oxymoron, it is a very serious issue. As the owner of a web design firm and a father of two adolescents, I am keenly aware of the issues encountered in terms of security and safety on the Internet.

One of the first ways I tried to address this with my kids was either to limit or prohibit access to some websites. This had limited success at home, but at assumed safe places, such as public libraries with clearly defined childrens areas, there were major problems. The kids often loaded up a game that many of them played on the library's computers. They later accessed it from home. It was as much as an eye opener as was the scantily-dressed women appearing in the ads in the page margins. Then it made sense, the library cannot filter everything, and if they could, they would limit the access of adults.

My next attempt was to ban technology as a punishment for infractions. This failed miserably. My office is near my residence, so I am around my kids more often. They are now older and mobile. When one of the kids got in trouble, I applied some advice I got from other parents by taking his cell phone to break a bad habit in the making. Well, I broke first. I wasn't just limiting his ability to communicate with his friends, I was limiting my ability to communicate with him. Send him to the store? He needs the phone. Send him to the library? He needs the phone. You get the picture. This became less of a punishment, and more of a safety issue. He got the phone back rather quickly.

My last attempt was to educate them more, and monitor them less. This is very scary, because you have to build trust. You also have to address issues quickly when trust is broken, sometimes with penalties, but always with more education. I found that this works for two reasons - one is that children understand trust, and two, you cannot monitor everything or buy enough monitoring technology to cover all of the bases (see the library story above).

When you think about your organization, you may quickly see parallels. You would never think of taking technology from an employee. They simply wouldn’t be able to do their jobs. However, we occasionally take the monitoring route. You have a responsibility to ensure technology is being properly used. But has the block, ban and monitor methods really worked, or have they worked you and your checkbook more?

You also have to consider the fact that your employees bring technology into the workplace. The devices they purchase for personal use come with them to work, such as cell phones, wireless devices and eReaders. An employee can send or show messages and materials without ever violating your bans of improper usage of your computers and communication networks.

I recall a couple of incidents when I worked at the Sears Tower in Chicago during one year of March Madness and the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. Office pools were rampant, and employees were using 900-prefix numbers to get updates on scores and their bracket standings. A month later, the bills came, and many departments had several thousand dollars in charges to these numbers. The manager decided to block these prefixes. A year later, we were experiencing tremendous wind gusts, and in turn, severe building swings. That same manager wanted someone to call to get updates on weather conditions. Guess what? The weather number was also a 900-prefix. In trying to block the bad, he also blocked the good.

Whether it is your children or your employees, you may want to think about investing a lot more in education, and a lot less in block, ban and monitor technology. People will find ways to defeat the technology to get at what they want, and that brain power should be used for more productive tasks. Besides, you spent a pile of money on technology. Do you really want to spend just as much to limit those same employees?

Come see us at the presentation on April 24th. Click on the graphic above for more information.