09 October, 2008

Digital us-thoughts

Lots of us now is 010. digital images, address books, messages, e-mails and to top it Kaman little pieces of us scattered all over the cyberspace.

Issues like data security, integrity and privacy are now addressed to individuals, not companies and organizations as used to. A stolen mobile became a tragic loss, not because of its value, but the data it contains. People are willing to pay thousands to restore photos from a corrupted drive/CD/DVD. A compromised e-mail account or a social network account may ruin lives.

people may consider it impolite to open another person wardrobe, but perfectly ok to browse a mobile phone for messages, pics. A laptop for e-mails or folders on a flash drive.

What sparked all that was a lost mobile from a friend and another one who lost a portable hard disk

All the things I mentioned above needs to be addressed with responsibility rather than care. Responsibility cause our data doesn’t just involve us, but family and friends.

Backup ur data, now it is cheap and automated, external hard drives starts from 300 pounds with automatic back up options. DVDs can handle a 4 gigs of data but need to be checked for consistency.

Password protect important files, use strong passwords for laptop log in name, not just windows password, but more important BIOS password.

Revisit your passwords in general, make it longer and tougher to break, chk options of retrieving lost password from websites just in case and policies when a password in compromised.

Revisit your friend lists and chk the privileges they have to view your friends list, photo album and contact details.

Our digital traces last longer than we had ever expected and are harder to delete, a message posted to a group or a forum may last years to come and show up the wrong place at the wrong time, a golden rule of thumb, don’t write what u don’t say in public.


Be careful with flash drives, almost always are shared publically at colleges and work place. A copy can be make in a blink of an eye with a flick of a finger

1 comment:

Egyptiana Trapped Soul said...

what a scary post :@

but unfortunately true..

i will tell you a story: once i was talking to a friend of mine, and then he said what were you doing on that site "an indian dating site", i told him i have nothing to do with it.. he said but your phone number is there !!!

i checked, i found all info right, the funny thing is that i registered on this website before for free sms.. and it didnt work .

moreover, people who have access to your data, can make false accounts on all sort of sites..

digital life .. as much as i love it, it is getting riskier everyday !!

thanks for pinpointing the issue.. i will start to check my digital security status..

ps: what is the bios pass???