If you have ever been
the lucky receiver of a malicious virus or spyware, then you know how frustrating
these nasty little things can be. Most people think it will never happen to me,
or someone can’t hack into my banking information and email. I just recently
had the unfortunate problem of having an 18 year old hack into my email and
start up a porn account with my address. I was able to recover my account, but
now have the daily privilege of receiving dirty pictures and emails from
individuals looking for a good time. I know this doesn’t seem that bad, but I
am married woman with a toddler and this I had to explain to my husband…not a
fun conversation.
Security for your
personal computer and education is a definite must. There are way too many
people out there who just want to mess up people’s lives and bank accounts for
fun or to steal their identity and make their live a complete nightmare. I am
not teaching at this time and unfortunately have never thought to ask about the
security system for computers at the school that I observe at since I don’t
touch any of their computers. I
currently have Norton running on my home computers including my cell phone and
kindle. I don’t take any chances. My husband is an IT in the US Navy so he has
set up our system quite well. All of our Wi-Fi has passwords so nobody can get
into our system. The hubby taught me that all passwords to anything you have
need to be long and complicated and shouldn’t contain anything with your name,
birthdate, family, children etc. It should be a combination of letters,
numbers, characters, and upper/lower case if applicable. You never give
personal information over email or on your social media page. You lock your
doors at night to protect your house from intruders, it is the same thing but
this time you are locking up your identity from thieves.
When I start my student
teaching, hopefully this fall, I will definitely ask about computer security
since I will be using my personal laptop computer to handle the classroom. Not
only should teachers be educated in this matter but students as well. Students
use computers at school as well as home and may not necessarily know what to
look for when they are surfing the web for new music or attachments from
emails. All it takes is one click of a mouse and boom you have a nasty virus
that wipes your hard drive clean and crashes the computer. When it comes to
educational technology, students should be educated in how to use the
technology prospering as well and informed of security risks.
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