And in conclusion….

I have enjoyed this class and I am excited for what the Cyber future holds for us! 

What I liked best about this class was all of the exercises that we were asked to do.  Sometimes you know that all of these things are available to you (i.e. discussion boards, blogs, etc.), but for whatever reason, you don’t take it upon yourself to look into them.  Maybe it’s because we’re all to busy?!? 

I know for me personally, I have a list a mile long of websites I would like to check-out or things I would like to research or projects I would like to do, if I ever have a spare moment someday…but I never seem to.  So this class for me was a good exercise in getting some of those things checked off my list. 

Probably the most personally impacting exercise was the letter’s though: that exercise was priceless! 

And in the spirit of evaluating, my least favorite was the abstinence exercise!  When you have such an AMAZING tool as the Internet, who wants to abstain from it?!?!  Just kidding, I know that it’s good for us to remember or experience what life was like B.C. (before computers), but that doesn’t mean that it’s fun. 

Overall, I would recommend this class to anyone who’s life is affected or influenced by a computer…so pretty much anyone!  As for changes, I think that the content was great, I just struggled with a few of the logistics.  I understand why there’s limits on when you can participate in the discussion boards, but I also know that it’s sometime hard with life to fit in responding only on the weekends.  And it was also frustrating to have so many blog choices: not all servers were comment friendly (unless you belonged to their blog service, you couldn’t comment).  Otherwise, I enjoyed my experience and reading all of my classmates blogs!  You really get to see some personality (way more than you get on the OSU discussion board). 

Have a great rest of the summer everyone…all three weeks of it that is! =(

WILD CARD!!!

Well, one of the biggest frustrations or challenges that I have with the Internet is the security of on-line shopping. Most of the time it’s so much cheaper than what I can find in the stores, not to mention the convenience of clicking and shipping! But with that, comes a bank account number that has to be blindly sent through Cyberspace. And on more than one occasion (it’s only been twice, but still that counts as more than one), my bank card number has been stolen.

The first time it was stolen was in connection with E-Bay and Pay-Pal. I was new to the sites and I had just set-up my Pay-Pal Account when I got an e-mail requesting verification of my card number. I know now that I should have been suspicious, but I wasn’t and so off it went to be “verified.” Well, in reality what had just happened was that thieves had taken control of my account. The address on this fake request was something like www.paypal1.com. I can’t remember exactly, but it was something very sneaky like the 1 at the end of the address that tips you off…I know now to look more closely. Which by the way, has come in handy on more than one occasion since then!

Anyway, the thieves proceeded to charge up thousands of dollars in the matter of a few days, until one day the bank called me at home and asked if I was traveling oversees (apparently that’s where these charges were originating from), which was out of my norm so that’s why they had flagged it. Of course, I wasn’t (remember they called me at home) and so they shut down the card immediately and I wasn’t responsible for the charges…end of story! No, not exactly. What ended up happening is they moved those charges over into another account with my name and SSN attached as a holding place while they investigated (but no body did). And since it wasn’t a fully set-up account, I wasn’t getting statements (I thought the charges had all be reversed), but what was happening was that they (the bank) was reporting me delinquent to the credit bureau. Three months later, I get a call from a debt collector asking when I was planning on paying this bill….hello, what bill?!? I hadn’t used that card since the “incident”. In fact, I shut down the whole E-Bay, Pay-Pal account and decided it wasn’t for me.

Long story short, it was almost a full year later that I got the credit bureau corrected and the cards BOTH canceled. Not to mention the countless hours of my time dealing with it via phone, e-mail and eventually letters.

The second time was not all that long ago, and if anyone else buys their books from the OSU bookstore they’ll know what I am talking about. This time though, I had called in my order and given them my credit card number over the phone, which was input into a database that was latter hacked into and stolen. Again, charges were made and the credit card company called me and the card was shut down….it’s still to early to tell though if I will repeat the whole debt collector scenario.

As a side note though, OSU did sent out a blanket e-mail warning me of this potential breach, which was caught by my spam filter and deposited into the trash (I still don’t know why since other OSU e-mails are not), but anyway, it was almost two full weeks after my credit card company had contacted me about the suspicious charges when they did this…way to late!

I guess the moral of the story is, expect these things to happen if you’re going to shop on-line or over the phone…or maybe it’s just my luck?! No, I really do think this is more common that people think or know about and it’s sad because again, something that was designed to help up out and save us time, ends up costing us more of both in the long run.

Wood and Smith’s reading’s this week focused on Internet hate sites saying that, “this is the dark side of the Internet (pg. 191).” Well, I would say that the thieves that steal credit card numbers should be included in that “dark side” group and the frustrating part about it is that you don’t even know they are out there, watching you. At least on the street if someone steals your wallet, you have the chance of seeing them do it.

Internet and Your Age….

The Internet has brought so much potential to our lives in terms of opportunities and options available to us.  Instead of calling someone on a phone (land-line for that matter) or writing a letter with pen and paper, you can now e-mail them, IM (Instant Message), post a comment to a blog or an on-line discussion forum, you can call them from your cell phone on a snorkel boat in Hawaii (I personally experienced that one last week)…but anyway, the point is that our available means of communication has changed drastically over the last few decades. 

In talking with my mom, I will leave her age unsaid, but she falls into the middle group (she’s not old enough to get the senior discount yet, but close), she says that she’s got no computer skills at all; however, I would beg to differ.  She can turn it on and off and e-mail, type, or surf the Internet, but if she’s got to troubleshoot it at all, no chance!  Personally, I think she underestimates her abilities, but maybe that’s a trend with her age group?   

Anyway, her primary uses are e-mail and an occasional word processing need (i.e. the yearly Christmas Letter), since she’s self-employed (and has been for 25 years).  She still does most things the old fashion way with hard copies and ledger books.  When I think of her IM’ing or participating in an on-line discussion, I have to laugh.  She just started utilizing text messaging on her cell phone last month (and it’s a rare occurrence at that). 

Overall, my mom thinks that the Internet is a good thing, for today’s generation.  She says that hers is to far past it (they can live without it), but she thinks that it does offer some great opportunities for today’s times.  She still thinks that it’s amazing that I could finish my Bachelor’s degree totally on-line from Oregon State! 

The next person I talked to was my younger sister.  She had already been shocked by the abstinence exercise earlier in the term, so I thought that she might have some interesting things to say about her Internet usage. 

Being newly graduated and working full-time in Accounting, she says that she couldn’t imagine life without the Internet.  Her company is completely paperless; every thing’s kept on-line.  They communicate (all hours of the day and night she says) via e-mail, IM, or cell phone’s.  All employees have dual monitor displays at home with laptops and access to all of the companies software 24 hours a day/ 7 days a week.  She says that she never really gets away from work…she’ll soon learn boundaries, but for now she LOVES it!

Overall, she’s embarrassed the Internet for all of it’s potential and it’s a good thing right now, I have to wonder though if it won’t become a bad thing when she’s burned out and CAN’T seem to get away from work?!? 

Last, by not least, my grandparents had some words to add about the Internet.  It’s worthless!!  My grandpa, bless his heart, says that his computer does nothing but sit over in the corner collecting dust.  The only thing that he knows how to do it play solitaire, but who wants to wait the 20 minutes it takes to warm up, when you could just go grab a deck of cards and be done with it!?!  I don’t know grandpa!  Now gran-it, his computer is extremely old and slow and he doesn’t have any access to the Internet, never has and never will he says: that’s for the younger generation! 

Overall, he thinks that it’s got potential for today’s kids, but he’s got no need for it.  And he often wonder’s why we can’t just be happy with what we’ve already got?  “I remember when we got our first Black & White TV…..too funny!!

So, what does it all mean….I found that the younger you are the more you like the Internet and the older the generations get, the more they have no need for it.  And I suppose, if I were to interview my great grandpa, he’d probably avoid the whole thing all together?!?