Lesson 8

Netiquette

I feel like everything on this site is common sense, but a lot of the time common sense goes out the window when people sit down at a computer. I think some people think that the screen is a force field that protects them from any consequences they should face. I like the golden rule of Netiquette, “Remember the Human.” I think it is important to always remember this because it is easy to say negative things about people when you don’t have to look them in the eye. We discussed this very thing at school today and how important it is to communicate respectfully and thoughtfully when emailing colleges and parents.

Viruses

I don’t think a lot about viruses because I have a Mac, and at school I trust that our school technology people protect our computers with virus protection. I usually try and protect myself by not opening or clicking on things that look suspicious. If I don’t know who sent me and email I delete it and if it looks like spam I delete it. I think this is really important on social media sites because they are full of scams that end up hacking your account and sending messages to everyone. Better safe than sorry, so no clicking on those quizzes, and other advertisements.  When I think about it I wonder why people feel the need to create viruses, it doesn’t do anything for the creator unless they are hacking into a particular computer, and for everyone else it just causes a huge headache.

Security

Our computers at school have virus protection on them and I trust that it works and is up to date. I think where our security problems come into play at school is related to passwords. Students’ accounts have been hacked by other students by simply stealing their password and erasing their info within a program or stealing their “coins” they earned. Each student has a log-in for the computer but due to lost time on the lab because of students forgetting their usernames and or passwords we keep them logged on a general name. I am not sure if this is an avenue for problems but it works well for us in a time constraint.

For my teacher computer I am more afraid of confidential information getting out then my computer getting a virus. We discussed to day at school that we should completely log out of our email instead of minimizing it. I minimize mine all the time and this is a problem because anyone could come into my room and pull it up. I had an issue last year where I would be inputting grades and go to use the smart board and the grades would be projected on the screen because the source button had not been switched over. This problem should be solved this upcoming year because my teacher computer will not be hooked up to the smart board. Protecting information on my computer is more of a concern for me than viruses.