The social impacts of IT:

IT has had a great effect on people these days as they use IT for everything. People now a day can communicate to people who are far away using email and social networking sites such as Facebook and twitter the advantages of this method is that you can receive and send information much faster. There are many different social networking sites where people can communicate with each other and talk about there every day life. Today everyone is using social networking sites for communication including teenagers to seniors. People now a days use a lot. People can now shop online using the Internet and also students can use the Internet for research instead of books

Advantages of the internet:

• Faster Communication.
• Information Resources.
• Entertainment.
• Online shopping.
• Social Networking.
• E-commerce.

Disadvantages of the internet:

• Theft of Personal Information
• Spamming.
• Virus Threat.
• Pornography.
• Social Disconnect.
• Cyber bullying etc.

IT has changed the way people socially connect with each other in many ways. Before the internet and the general use of computers the only way to meet new people and talk to them was to meet them face to face, normally in an office during a meeting or a café. Kids had less ways to entertain themselves and spent more time playing outdoors. Also people use to use books instead of the internet for educational purposes. Also more people used to go to the market to buy their shopping whereas now people shop online.

We should always be careful online as  there are a lot of viruses out there such as trojons, malware, spyware etc.

 

Why be careful online?

The internet has a lot of dangers such as viruses that can damage the computer and delete a lot of files from the hard drive these viruses can come from emails, bad sites, advertisements and malware.

People can also get in to your personal details though phishing, phishing is a method of online identity theft. Phishing emails are designed to trick the users into visiting the links in the email that are designed to steal personal information such as  usernames, passwords, credit card information etc.  So it is very important to be aware of these dangers and not go on harmful website.

Also we should be careful on social networking sites as there are a lot of dangers there too, someone can attack you account and get your information from your profile and they can also impersonate you  and send your friends messages.

With social networking sites you don’t always know who you are talking to as you don’t know that person personally.  Also there are a lot of paedophiles  and fake accounts.

 

What forms of protection can we rely on when online?

You must make sure that the computer is protected with a firewall, spam filters, anti-virus and anti spyware software. Also we must also make sure that we don’t trust random email messages and avoid going on bad sites

You should also minimise security issues in browsers

·        Use trusted certificates

·        Password saving

·        Private browsing

·        3^rd party cookies

·        Smart screen filter

·        Pop up blocker

 

How to make sure data is safe?

You can secure you data by avoiding these viruses. For example Phishing attacks can be avoided by guarding against spam you can also avoid phishing attacks by communicating personal information only through phone or through websites that are secure. Also you must never enter personal information on pop up screen.  You shouldn’t trust email headers as they can easily be fake. Another way you can avoid a phishing attack is by avoiding filling out forms in e-mail messages because one can’t be sure where the data will be sent and the information can make many stops on the way to the recipients

 

How do we make sure data is safe?

You would need to have the following in order to make sure that your data is safe:

Firewalls:

A firewall is a software or hardware item which provides security for a computer or local network by preventing illegal access.

Encryption:

Encryption means to scramble data in a way that only someone with the secret code can read it. 

Backups:

Backups Means making one or more copies of your data somewhere else in case a virus wipes out your system you will still have the work as you had backed it up.

Organisations would do a lot of backups in case their system wipes out because of viruses, backing up basically means saving your work on an external hard drive or on your emails this is to avoid possible loss of data, and if the system does wipe out you can bring your work back again.