Topic 2

Question 1: Facebook.
I've had a Facebook profile since 2007 and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't concerned for my personal security the whole time I've been using it. I remember there being some controversy over who owns the rights to the media when it is uploaded to the site. I'm still not clear whether Facebook get ownership or we, the users, retain the rights.

a) I've always thought Facebook is a bit of an intimidating force. Recent news articles have reaffirmed this with Facebook hackers breaking into peoples accounts, locking out the owners then conning their friends into wiring money to overseas bank accounts.
I understand that there has to be a balance between ethics, security and usability. Without the ease of interaction facebook probably wouldn't have become the hit that it is.
There will always be security loopholes, there will always be people calling for tighter security and there will always be people breaking through the security. So I am of the opinion that we need to take some personal responsibility in learning as much as we can about how these networking sites operate and protect ourselves as much as we can without relying solely on the provider.

b) What do I think the difference is between social cognition and visual cognition? Is the word choice here deliberate? Am I being asked for my opinion here without 20 references and a verbose description given from the third person? If I were to hazard a guess right now, before looking up the definitions (as I'm going to shortly) I would say that social cognition is ones ability to comprehend and participate in social interactions. Visual cognition being ones ability to recognize and interact with visual stimuli. Now, be right back while I hit wikipedia and dictionary.com...

(time passes)

What do ya know? I was right (pretty much). The significance of this question I think though is to explore how our social interactions have drifted towards the visual interactions via a computer screen. So ones aptitude at visual cognition has little bearing on their social cognition. Which I guess is one explanation why the more socially inept have fewer problems interacting over the internet.

Question 2: Second Life
I have used second life in the past and my experience of it was rather unpleasant, so much so that I'd rather not revisit it just for the sake of this question. Mark me down if necessary but I'd sacrifice a few marks versus going back there. I found it to be an enormous egocentric chaotic mess. Peoples attention spans are so short for the most part if you can blurt out a life history within 12 seconds of them greeting you they get bored, insult you and fly away. There is user made content everywhere, which requires micro-transactions to build I might add. This user created content is, for the most part amateurish and haphazard. Forgive me if I'm being cruel here but the imagery that comes to mind when I think of second life is that of spoiled children. They have been provided an environment that can be developed completely by the whims of their ego. While I'm making sweeping generalisations here, I can only comment of my own experience, and those weren't great.

Question 3: Online Persona
I have done my best to be consistent in my online presence. I don't seek to misinform anyone of my identity. What I do practice from account to account is how much information I give away. For things like Facebook I have disclosed as much on that network as I am prepared to on an online environment. Every other online persona I own is a lite version of that. Even my facebook profile I do my best not to give anything of real value away (although one might argue some of my photos are incriminating). Because of how much I use facebook and because of the nature of the information I have been reticent to accept friend requests from people in this class that I haven't first spoken with to some length.

Question 4: Online identity and your state of presence.
At the time of writing this the document containing the reading was not available for reflection. As is the nature of the web I will improvise and pull the necessary information from another *cough* reliable *cough* source: Wikipedia.

Phising: This is the practice whereby fraudsters try to trick people into disclosing confidential information by masquerading as the organisations the user is involved with. Preventative measures involve educating the community at large of this threat and how to identify phishers. Usually it's just a good idea to err on the side of caution. If they really are from the group they represent they will respect your caution. Technological measures to prevent phishing are also available like digital certificates of authenticity and the like but ultimately these are really only an aid to the educated user.

Pharming: This is when a hacker re-routes internet traffic from one site to another through whatever means are available at the time. This coupled with phishing can be an effective way of swindling people out of their information.

Privacy invasion: As the name implies, this is the invasion of ones privacy. When personal information is posted on the internet under secure means, it is an invasion of privacy for someone else to access that without authorisation and a step worse to publish the information elsewhere or use it for their own ends.

Identity theft: This is where someone attempts to masquerade as someone else using the personal information of the person they are mimicking. This is prevalent only many social networking sites in regard to celebrities. There are usually a solid handful of accounts claiming to be the real deal. In more severe cases (not to trivialise pathetic fans or anything) people who invade privacy by using phishing and pharming can garner enough information to successfully thieve someone's identity. Using this information it can even be possible in some cases to persuade more organisations that you are who you are impersonating than the original victim. Is this a statement of our societal values? Hmmm...