The first reading assignment was about Web Hoaxes, Counterfeit Sites, and Other Spurious Information on the Internet. This reading was very informative on all the dangers of information on web sites, and the dangers of false web sites in general.
Counterfeit Web sites are the most troublesome of hoax sites because it disguises itself as a legitimate site for the purpose of disseminating misinformation. Even though the intentions of some sites are political, fun, and instructional, there are some sites that cause harm because of the information that is being posted. One example the reading uses is the Martin Luther King Jr., site that depicts King as a plagiarist, communist, and woman beater. This is an issue because the younger generation who maybe doing a report on Martin Luther King Jr., will be misinformed and take it as fact, which will alter their prospective on him and attempt to bring discredit upon the teacher, which the student could then lose trust in. To help eliminate this issue, teachers need to be informed that there are web sites like register.com to help determine validity of a site, and then they need to pass this information on to their students.
News and media are even vulnerable to unverified facts. Disinformation can occur if facts remain unverified, which could become highly problematic, such was the case of the Washington Post issue about the propaganda war of Russia and Chechnya. The way the media is today, they are more focused on becoming the first to break a story rather than researching the validity of a story. News and media need to start having a system of checks and balances before posting any information. Disinformation can cause a spiraling effect that only gets worse, and could possibly lead to major issues. The Russia and Chechnya issue, lead to Serbian Hackers corrupting the NATO site.
Charity scams is one of the few internet issues that deal with people losing money. They appear during disasters and prey on the innocent. Everyone needs to be informed about sites that appear like this because people think they are helping a good cause and are being fooled. Another dangerous issue that arises is false health sites. Misinformation like this can cause helpless individuals to get wrong information about medication that could possibly get them killed. Sites like these need to be monitored by someone and taken down if the information is wrong because of the implications that can arise from this information being disseminated. The people who post this information should be held legally responsible also because they post information they know is not completely accurate. They should be forced to put up a warning or something letting people know that the facts they post are not proven to be true.
Lastly, I think the least dangerous is the parodies and spoofs sites. Most of these sites are for entertainment purposes for people to just get a daily laugh and share with friends. The fact that most sites post warnings, help with the misinformation issue. There are issues with domain grabbing, but I would take that over all the other internet issues that have arisen.
When talking about the different kinds of web sites that appear that causes issues, hacks are an issue for sites that are already up and running. Hackers will always cause issues for web sites out on the internet. For the most part they are more troublesome for the people who own the site than they are dangerous because they force the sites owners to take the site down and work on it, but hackers can be dangerous too, especially when dealing with online banking, and anything dealing with money. The only way to prevent this is better security by the site. Even informing users of the internet about hacking it is still normally extremely difficult to catch a site that has been hacked. There is really no full proof plan of preventing someone from accessing a hacked site.
The countermeasures the reading posts are helpful with the suggestions they give about looking close at the URL, use print sources for verification, and checking suspicious domain names. The best countermeasure the reading did not list is when researching any information; print sources and the library are the best resources to use. Also, the librarians there can probably help you to determine when you have stumbled on to one of the sites listed in the readings. The internet has basically put a damper on libraries, but they are still ultimately the best resource to use for any questions when it comes to research or overall information on any subject or topic.
No comments:
Post a Comment