With the recent news about the Cambridge Analytica and Facebook situation, and how over 50 million people’s account information was taken without their prior knowledge, making now a prime time to talk about ways to keep accounts and information secure online.
After a recent survey of Westside students, it was found that 85.7% of students at Westside had a social media account with their real name and information on it, with 14.3% of students saying that they either had social media without their name, or had none at all. As for protecting their online information, a little over two thirds of students stated that they changed their passwords around for some websites they used, with only 11.4% stating that they used the same password for every site they were on.
Students also had mixed opinions on how safe they thought their information was online. Almost 55% of people surveyed stated that they thought their information was safe online, with a third of them stating that “they didn’t go out of their way” to make sure their information was protected, but still trusted that their information was safe. Finally, a surprising 20% of Westside Students said that they hadn’t given online safety much thought, as far as social media was concerned.
So, with mixed results such as these, what are some ways that Westside students can keep their accounts safe online? According to a study funded by the NCSA, or National Cyber Security Alliance, accounts which had different passwords from site to site were much less likely to be hacked than those that didn’t. So, if a password was compromised from one site, that doesn’t automatically make your other accounts vulnerable. The NCSA also found that by using two factor authentication with a phone or tablet in addition to a password, it was significantly more difficult for people to have their information stolen by someone that didn’t already know them.
But with all of this data, how can a Westside students stay safe online? Michael Sanchez, the IT Manager for WHS, said that he personally recommends that students keep their information private.
“Always keep information private in the hands of Facebook…[email scamming] is also becoming more and more sophisticated,” Sanchez said. “Never enter information on sites you don’t trust, or from emails [where] you don’t know the sender.”
As for Westside servers, Sanchez said that security is taken seriously.
“We don’t take data security lightly,” Sanchez said. “All of our servers that have student data are encrypted, and…we do security audits every few years, which are we we have someone come in and show us [how to improve our security].”
Sanchez says that if students take the right steps they should have no problems with online security.
Graphic by Aayushi Chaudhary.
