| As more people embrace social networking, we are leaving ourselves open to scammers or worse, Much has been said about the internet and social media’s role in the revolution. By Randa El TahawyMuch has been said about the internet and social media’s role in the revolution, and the rising number of new accounts in Egypt attest to its growing popularity in recent months. The darker side of the web, however, often goes unremarked. While many use the internet as a force for good, many others trawl the web in search of mischief or worse. And even the most net-savvy seem to be doing little to protect themselves. In the Egypt Today newsroom alone, three staff members have fallen victim to some form of internet fraud. Two journalists recently found their email and Facebook accounts hacked and passwords changed without their knowledge: another one found an unknown person had created a Facebook account using not only the journalist’s name but photos apparently taken from her original Facebook profile. With its rapidly growing social media market, Egyptians are becoming prime targets for internet fraud. According to the study “The Egyptian Facebook Revolution,” by the Cairo-based agency Digital Republic, Egypt gained 632,120 new Facebook users from January to February 2011, an increase of 12.16 percent. Egyptian Twitter adoption also grew tenfold in January, with an estimated 1 million users out of the nation’s 25 million internet users now on the site. In December 2010, Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society surveyed 98 bloggers in the MENA region, including 26 Egyptians, about tools available to safeguard their privacy and avoid online surveillance. The results, published in August in the report “International Bloggers and Internet Control,” indicate that most bloggers do not understand or take advantage of the online security measures necessary to protect themselves. Of the bloggers surveyed in the report, one in five had an account hacked or suffered an online attack. Nevertheless, only 11 percent of the bloggers said security was their first priority in choosing a social network, with only 8 percent prioritizing based on the network company’s resistance to government audits and 3 percent concerned with the company’s data-sharing policies. “While a large majority of respondents indicate an acute awareness of the risks of publishing sensitive material online […] very few appear to follow a strict set of online security practices,” the report said. And while the Berkman Center report suggests that the burden falls on social networking and blogging platforms themselves to enhance security, Nader Eliwa, an intern at Microsoft Egypt, says people still have to be careful when revealing information. Eliwa calls himself an “ethical hacker,” someone who knows how to hack into a computer system but doesn’t use the knowledge to harm people or networks. “Revealing information about yourself and tweeting [your whereabouts] or that you are waking up now, can be dangerous. When you post this on Twitter, you are vulnerable to all sorts of robbers and thieves. You are exposing yourself to people you don’t know,” he says, adding that people can still achieve a great deal of exposure and online branding on Twitter by sharing valuable information and interests that are not personal or dangerous. Dangers Online Ghada Khalifa, citizenship manager at Microsoft Egypt, explains that many serious online crimes could be prevented if people paid more attention to security. “The dangers have [always] been there, but it can be more dangerous if you look at the number of people who are now on the internet,” Khalifa says. “Especially since not all of them have the knowledge to understand what they see.” She adds that given Egypt’s current security problems, it could lead to an increase in crimes. The most common internet crime in Egypt is fraud, according to Khalifa, who notes that scammers are ever present on social media and on the internet in general. She cites a classic email scam: The email claims the recipient has won a certain amount of money and instructs them to claim the money by contacting a phone number or email address and providing bank account numbers, passwords and other personal data, which the scammer can use to steal money from the victim. Noting that fraud preys on the naïve, Khalifa thinks it is easy to avoid being scammed this way. “There are a lot of frauds that could be prevented if the behavior of people changed,” she says. “Do you know how many people share their passwords with people? They share it as if they share public information. [Your password] is supposed to be secret, you don’t share it with anybody.” Poor internet security habits can also leave you open to impersonation, where people create new social media accounts using the names of other existing people, stealing their pictures and them or even posting them on websites. Impersonation often crosses over into defamation, where the fake account is used to spread statements or altered images that damage the victim’s reputation. “I hear about it three or four times a month from my friends,” says Eliwa. “It happens a lot. It must be someone who left their password somewhere. To prevent it, you just need to be careful with your password. It is deadly dangerous for people to impersonate you — things that you haven’t done backfire on you.” Sherif El Kassas, a computer science professor at the American University in Cairo, says that awareness is the best defense. “We all need to make use of our common sense and to think of the implications of using technology,” he says. If you post your phone number, address, or family album online, please expect that everybody will access them and some will abuse them.” The Safe Side While internet fraud is a growing concern here, Khalifa notes there are many serious internet crimes that are not yet prevalent in Egypt, such as identity theft and abduction. Identity theft is far more serious than impersonation, with the thieves accessing all your personal information including your name, insurance, credit card and bank account numbers. Social media networks can also be used to lure victims into situations where they can be abducted. Khalifa warns of the potential for these crimes to spread into the country, especially since the security status remains unstable. Khalifa notes that while internet-related abductions don’t typically happen in Egypt, organized crime tends to start moving into regions that don’t have strong internet censorship. Khalifa’s concern is with human trafficking and the sex trade. The US State Department’s 2011 report on human trafficking lists nine Middle East and North African countries among those making no effort to combat trafficking. Egypt is considered a “tier 2 country,” listed as a “source, transit and destination country” for trafficking but recognized for making efforts to battle the problem. With developed countries cracking down on the internet sex trade, Khalifa says, “These crimes are starting to be directed into these regions where law enforcement is pretty low.” She adds that during its investigations, Interpol found images of child abuse and rape with Arabic-language captions on or in the pictures — indicating it is a problem in Arab countries. “Sex trade online is an actual crime, I’m not talking about pornography, I am talking about child rape and child abuse,” she says. “I can’t tell you if it happens in Egypt or not — I don’t know. But it happens in Arab countries.” Unfortunately, people are still far from being fully aware of these dangers as Khalifa explains that her research with Microsoft shows that 95% of the users of Internet Explorer’s browser are not turning on their privacy settings and parental control. “We need to put privacy settings on the internet, and all you need is a click,” she says. If there were a one-click solution, it wouldn’t negate the need for personal vigilance, she says. “The internet is a wonderful place and resource, and the world has changed forever because of it,” says Kassas, “but security is a major challenge and will continue to be so for quite some time to come. We have to be mindful of this downside, and educate ourselves to make the best out of it.” Know Your Enemy Sherif El Kassas, a computer science professor at the American University in Cairo, says internet protocols — the standards defining how information flows across the net — were not designed with much security in mind. “Security is mostly an afterthought on the internet,” he says. The basic types of attacks on systems and information are either physical, technical or social; sometimes an attack is a combination of all three. El Kassas says physical attacks target the hardware or the environment in which systems exist and can be as simple as equipment theft. “Consider what would happen if someone gets hold of your computer or smart phone,” he says. “Without too much effort they would have access to your contacts, documents, emails, identity credentials passwords and more.” Technical attacks exploit the vulnerabilities and functionality of our systems. A classic example is the computer virus or worm that infects systems by copying itself from one shared directory to another, exploiting wrong file sharing settings or guessing weak passwords. Tools such as anti-virus software offer some protection, but El Kassas cautions that it isn’t perfect protection. What El Kassas calls social attacks are mostly con jobs that exploit our understanding and trust of the technology we use. He cites the example of the emails and text messages that ask people to dial numbers to claim a prize they won. No technology can protect you from a social attack, he says: “In general the only real defenses to date are education and awareness.” Tips for Staying Safe Online Passwords • Don’t share them and don’t write them down where people can find them. Better yet, memorize them. The exception: Children under 18 should only share their passwords with their parents. • Passwords should be more than seven or eight characters and use both lower case and upper case letters and numbers. Best practice: Change your password every two or three months. • Do not use personal data when creating your password. It can be easily discovered if people know your information. Social Media and Internet • Check the security settings for your internet browser. The most secure setting, usually called “private browsing,” will not save your page history or information from your session. • Adjust your Facebook privacy settings to block personal information, pictures and even your profile from strangers. You can also block your Tweets on Twitter. For Parents • Do not put pictures of your children online. • Children under the age of 13 should not have access to social media websites. • Advise your children not to reveal any personal information when they are online. • Do not leave children unsupervised on the internet and activate parental control settings. |
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