www.nickhodge.com

(From Vista Magazine, June 2007)

This digital life (ver­sion 2.0)

Nick, a recent addi­tion to Microsoft, is a long time blog­ger, presenter and geek. Read Nick’s exploits and stor­ies at http://www.nickhodge.com. A part of Nick’s “job” at Microsoft is to col­lect and record Australia’s Geek Stor­ies. Turn your web browser to http://thegeekstories.com. To hear what Nick is doing almost on a minute by minute basis, catch Nick on http://twitter.com/nickhodge

Being a mas­ter of your own digital iden­tity is a new life skill. Sim­ilar to rid­ing a bike, driv­ing a car or learn­ing how to read – ensur­ing that your digital inform­a­tion is pro­tec­ted is paramount.

Recently I atten­ded a cor­por­ate event where the senior man­ager of IT of a large bank was present­ing. As he was talk­ing about the bank’s use of tech­no­logy, I coin­cid­ent­ally received what the industry terms a phish­ing email. Phish­ing is where nefar­i­ous crim­in­als attempt to use elec­tronic means to steal your login ids, pass­words for fin­an­cial insti­tu­tions and other valu­able online identifiers.

If you have email, you are likely to have received one of these in your Out­look, too. The email would have con­tained strange state­ments about “changing your account set­tings” or similar.

For younger people, social net­works that once exis­ted via the phone, are now online using instant mes­saging (IM) applic­a­tions like MSN Live Mes­sen­ger. Par­ents and teach­ers express sur­prise at how kids con­nect both to their school friends; and like-minded friends all over the world. Long gone are the days of pen-friends in dif­fer­ent countries.

Bank­ing, super­an­nu­ation, com­mu­nic­a­tion, health, pho­tos, mes­saging, tele­phone, gov­ern­ment inform­a­tion – ser­vices that we all use to live in our soci­ety – are online, or fast mov­ing to primar­ily online.

Where do you learn to be safe online? And more import­antly, how do we ensure the younger ones in soci­ety are safe, and learn the “rules of the road”?

As much as soft­ware and net­work­ing tech­no­logy adapts and adds bar­ri­ers to cyber-criminals, sadly the state of human nature res­ults in a con­tinual pro­cess of devel­op­ment to block the nas­ties. Learn­ing to care­fully ques­tion what you read and see on the inter­net is as import­ant as watch­ing other drivers on the road.

Net­Alert (http://www.netalert.net.au/ ) has a good start­ing resource for the younger audi­ence. Netty for the 2–7 year olds and Cyber­Quoll for the 8–12 year olds — online char­ac­ters and car­toons for the young.

We can­not ignore the inter­net and global con­nectiv­ity, and learn­ing how to behave in the online com­munity is a life skill. Be safe out there, and enjoy the views from the cyber-highway.