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Tuesday, 26 September 2017 / Published in Woo on Tech

The Elephant on the Internet

In the days following the Equifax breach announcement I have been talking with many people – clients, family & friends – about what they should be doing to ensure they are prepared for a possibility of their identity being stolen. Across all these conversations one theme became readily apparent: none of the dozens of people I spoke with (myself included) knew much about how the credit agencies operated, despite being highly educated and seemingly well-versed in being both an adult and a working professional. Some of them even work in the finance industry and still had only a rudimentary grasp of the seriousness of the Equifax breach. During one particular conversation, I thoroughly dismayed a colleague by making them aware that with the information stolen in this breach, someone could file a false tax return under their name and that it would take the wronged party quite a bit of effort to undo this fraudulent act. Further alarm was caused by the revelation that this was done through the IRS’s own website, and that this form of identity theft has been around for years.

How many systems do we use that we have no idea how they operate or how to fix them if they break?

To further illustrate this point, key companies and institutions are being hacked, not just because hackers are clever and determined (they are), but also that we, the system users, often don’t understand how things work, and frequently don’t take the time to understand because: (a) it’s hard, and (b) it’s working, so why bother? When this happens, security takes a powder and criminals walk in the door. Case in point: big four firm Deloitte recently announced that it was breached earlier this year. Ironic? Yes, but even more so now that it seems the reason they were breached was because they themselves were lax on security principles presumably espoused by an organization hired to audit security.

Need another example of a big system in wide use but poorly understood, and clearly not secure? Facebook is poised to release data to Congress that illustrates how Russian operators leveraged Facebook’s own advertising engine to exploit the political divisiveness of American culture as well as the ample influence it exerts over the millions of US voters who have been repeatedly bamboozled by fake news and thinly veiled propaganda. Facebook itself has stated numerous times it doesn’t have a good solution to the problem, and even with the integrity of the US democracy at stake, it still doesn’t know the extent of Russian influence in its own advertising space.

What’s my point? There’s an elephant in the room, and in this case, on the internet. We are at the mercy of numerous systems that we have no chance of understanding, and yet we entrust our lives to them. To be fair, we have been doing this for decades: we drive cars we can’t repair, we fly in planes we have no chance of piloting, and we use devices very, very few of us could fix, even with the totality of Google at our fingertips. In advanced civilizations, this is expected and required for us to progress. What we cannot, and must not do is abrogate our responsibility to be at once skeptical and open minded about the things we don’t understand. Even if we can’t comprehend how a system works, we should seek to understand how that system impacts the things that are important to us, and take an active role in ensuring that system won’t harm you or the things you care about. If it seems like too many systems have gone off the rails because not enough people cared or understood them to foresee the danger, it might be because some people are actually starting to talk about the elephant on the internet.

Image courtesy of TAW4 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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10 Comments to “ The Elephant on the Internet”

  1. RONALD GRANT says :Reply
    September 27, 2017 at 2:15 pm

    Nicely done.

  2. The Elephant on the Internet, Part 2 – Get Tech Support Now – (818) 584-6021 – C2 Technology Partners, Inc. says :Reply
    November 14, 2017 at 11:53 pm

    […] I wrote about the Elephant on the Internet, and lately it seems like we can’t stop blundering into the pachyderm that shall not be […]

  3. Facebook at the center of multiple controversies – Get Tech Support Now – (818) 584-6021 – C2 Technology Partners, Inc. says :Reply
    January 30, 2018 at 7:42 pm

    […] After months of denying it had any significant role in the 2016 Presidential elections, Facebook finally admitted that its platform had been exploited by Russian propaganda agencies with the express intent of spreading “fake news” and creating division among Facebook users. Five months later, it seems they haven’t made any progress on this front, and have also managed to stir the pot on several other hot-button issues. Seeing as Facebook is still one of the largest social media platforms in the world, it’s highly likely you or someone you know and love uses Facebook. Becoming familiar with the current batch of controversies may help you visualize one of the biggest elephants in the internet room. […]

  4. Facebook in Hot Water Again – Get Tech Support Now – (818) 584-6021 – C2 Technology Partners, Inc. says :Reply
    March 21, 2018 at 4:15 pm

    […] in last week’s article, plenty of everyday folks I talk to regularly have expressed a growing sentiment that I also seem to write about with growing frequency. While the reports surrounding this […]

  5. Facebook’s Efforts at Transparency are Predictably Flimsy – Get Tech Support Now – (818) 584-6021 – C2 Technology Partners, Inc. says :Reply
    October 30, 2018 at 9:21 pm

    […] that’s the other problem with elephants on the internet: because of their size, they are hard to […]

  6. The Elephant in the Voting Machine – Part 2 – Get Tech Support Now – (818) 584-6021 – C2 Technology Partners, Inc. says :Reply
    November 6, 2018 at 9:38 pm

    […] Election Day in the US once again illustrates my point about technology and humans: we are not perfect, nor are the machines we build and use. Despite this reality being clearly […]

  7. The Devil is in the Privacy Policy – Get Tech Support Now – (818) 584-6021 – C2 Technology Partners, Inc. says :Reply
    December 11, 2018 at 8:55 pm

    […] with complete strangers who only view you as a profit center. This is yet another glimpse of the elephant on the internet around which everyone is still carefully tip-toeing. Make sure you are paying […]

  8. Two billion-record database left open on internet – Get Tech Support Now – (818) 584-6021 – C2 Technology Partners, Inc. says :Reply
    July 2, 2019 at 10:51 pm

    […] answered this rhetorical question several times in the past on this blog, but in case you’ve missed […]

  9. Deep fakes are coming and we aren’t ready – Get Tech Support Now – (818) 584-6021 – C2 Technology Partners, Inc. says :Reply
    September 3, 2019 at 7:11 pm

    […] that elephant again, though at least this time, there are a lot of people talking about it. Technology is again […]

  10. Know your tools – Get Tech Support Now – (818) 584-6021 – C2 Technology Partners, Inc. says :Reply
    January 12, 2021 at 6:50 pm

    […] user base should also pose a sober lesson for everyone. It’s clear that social media (and the internet) was meant to be a tool that was intended to bring the world closer to together but it has, at the […]

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