Information security

1. Use only strong pass­words. Do not use the same pass­words for so­cial me­dia and the work­place/school sys­tems.
2. Do not open sus­pi­cious at­tach­ments or links.
3. Do not let your browser save the user­name and pass­word in the mem­ory of the com­puter or mo­bile de­vice, even if the browser is propos­ing.
4. Delete brows­ing his­tory from time to time, es­pe­cially if you are us­ing other than your own com­puter.
5. Never send con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion via on­line forms, if the net­work con­nec­tion is not SSL pro­tected. Dur­ing a se­cure con­nec­tion, the browser reads https:// in the ad­dress bar (no­tice the ‘s‘- let­ter) and the bot­tom bar has a lock icon.
6. Re­mem­ber that the ser­vice ad­min­is­tra­tors can ac­cess all of the tech­ni­cal ser­vice with stored data, in­clud­ing the dis­cus­sions, and that the ser­vices of stored data may not be re­moved from the site in any way.
7. Think about what mat­ters and what you want to pub­lish openly on the web. Can this in­for­ma­tion or im­age be open for pub­lic even five years from now? If you save your files to a For­eign Ser­vice providers’ servers, they do not al­ways al­low your­self to unin­stall those doc­u­ments. If a For­eign Ser­vice provider stops their ser­vice, what will hap­pen to your doc­u­ments? Where will the doc­u­ments and files end up then?
8. Re­mem­ber that the In­ter­net is a pub­lic space. For ev­ery on­line ac­tiv­ity, brows­ing the net­work web­site and par­tic­i­pa­tion in the dis­cus­sions will leave some traces. For ex­am­ple, by the use of IP ad­dress of the ma­chine you have been us­ing, it is pos­si­ble to find out where you’ve been surf­ing and for how long and what ac­tiv­i­ties have you prac­ticed. This in­for­ma­tion through cook­ies may be com­bined into col­lected in­for­ma­tion data.

Photo: Mi­ikka Piri­nen

CY­BER-BUL­LY­ING

World wide net is a is a place where one can bully and be bul­lied just like at school. Anony­mous act­ing may ob­scure the no­tion that one is in­deed bul­ly­ing and hurt­ing some­one. Tran­si­tion of bul­ly­ing to the web and so­cial me­dia is also un­for­tu­nate be­cause the young is not able es­cape from be­ing bul­lied in their spare time or even when he or she re­turns home.  Most of the (on­line) cy­ber­bul­ly­ing takes place be­tween friends. The bully and the bul­lied know each other from school or even from the same hobby.

Cy­ber-bul­ly­ing can be, for ex­am­ple:

• Mock­ing or threat­en­ing mes­sage
• Spread­ing gos­sip or per­sonal in­for­ma­tion
• Ma­nip­u­la­tion and the dis­sem­i­na­tion of im­ages
• Us­ing some­one else’s user­name
• Ex­clu­sion from the group or con­ver­sa­tion
• Pass­words cheat­ing

If you are bul­lied or see some­one be­ing bul­lied:

• In­form your group coun­selor, cu­ra­tor or any­one be­long­ing to the staff.
• You may in­form stu­dent tu­tors or mem­bers of the stu­dent union.
•  You can tell it anony­mously dur­ing a group dis­cus­sions, for ex­am­ple.