February 14, 2022
by Kimberly Deaño
Technology has been evolving since it has been discovered. Each era, a new technology will rise and evolve. Modernization to these technologies is rapidly going in and out of trend every day, every week, every month, or every year. Internet has been one of the inventions that is always used. Each single day, individuals rely on the internet for searching, communicating, or just for entertainment purposes. Internet can be accessed as long as you are connected to an internet service provider. However, with each innovation, it is always accompanied with illicit acts to cause harm not just for the devices but also its owners.
Internet has been a go-to destination for inquiry, exploring, discover, or for amusement that is well used by children, youngsters especially students, adults such as parents, workers, influencers, or politicians, and even organizations and the industry. The internet has a variety of things that you can look into and be absorbed, like shopping, searching for jobs, searching for books, videos, pictures, watching news, browsing information, communicating through social media, and anything that you wanted and needed for.
With all the things that you can have in the internet, malicious figures and ill-natured people do take advantage of such useful platform. Technologically-savvy persons are not only making applications, programs, firmware, or software to improve our digital technologies to provide us easier life and user-friendly tools, they can also do us harm in our life or in our gadgets. Hackers, or cybercriminals can make different malware (malicious software) that can breach a person’s computer system to damage the files, infect other computers, or even steal data about a person or an organization to threat or just cause complications because some malware are not created to induce harm. Although hackers are known as cyber criminals, there are other types of cyber criminals all over the world, such as, identity thieves, internet stalkers, phishing scammers, and cyber terrorists.
A Safer Internet Day has been celebrated each February of the year to remind the people around the globe about safe internet usage. This year’s Safer Internet Day was held last February 8, 2022 with the theme of “Together for a Better Internet”. In saferinternetday.org, each individual has a role on how to support and act accordingly in using the internet. Nowadays, youngsters uses the internet more often, browsing through the internet whole day for entertainment especially the social medias and platforms that has videos or music. Youngsters always engage in sharing information online may it be for fun or important details. They are a piece of a whole especially in advocating safer internet, sharing experiences and inspire people with regards to using online platforms. Most of the time the voice of these young people contribute in spreading significant facts and spread awareness when it comes to cybercrimes. We also have the parents to guide the young ones in responsible online usage, to respect each individual and educate about the wellbeing of all people as the internet has a variety of cyber criminals lurking behind each digital technology. As an educator, it is imperative to raise awareness, specifically to the students in using the internet as safe and better resource for knowledge and learn things that are being input in several websites. If you are in an organization or in the industry, enhancing safety tools and influence viewers or readers for helpful contents in several platforms, designing better interaction for online services. And if you are a policy maker, encourage each and every one to review the items and services offered in online platforms, supervising them to media literacy and determine the good and bad influences. As part of the safer internet use, aside from advocating responsible browsing and sharing of information across the online applications, usage of firewalls, proxies, network encryption, or cyber liability insurance to prevent cyber-attacks and protect your personal information from leaking or from being stolen.
“Think before you click. If people do not know you personally and if they cannot see you as you type, what you post online can be taken out of context if you are not careful in the way your message is delivered.” – Germany Kent