American Momma

1. What were the top three social media sites, in terms of traffic, in 2020? List them in order of popularity.

Facebook 2.7 billion active users per month $86 billion in revenue

YouTube 2 billion active users per month $19.9 billion in revenue

Whatsapp 2 billion active users per month $5 billion in revenue

2. Provide a brief summary of how each social media site works and why people use it.

Facebook – The place to connect and share. I use Facebook daily. It’s fun to keep up on what friends and family are doing. It offers some news though often biased. And you can find some of the coolest and most unusual products for sale on Facebook. I think most people use Facebook because it is pretty simple to use. My 80 year old mother is even on Facebook.

YouTube – I originally thought was just for music. But there are actually tutorial videos on pretty much anything you want to learn. I have used Photoshop tutorials. I have also watched a tutorial on how to clean my firearm. Most of the content creators will promote products which helps them earn money.

Whatsapp – I am not very experience on Whatsapp. It does seem every scammer online posing as a real person wants to get you off of other social sites and onto Whatsapp. It is supposed to be a messaging app. Users can text, chat, share media and use voice messaging and video messaging. A pretty cool feature is that you can send your GPS location to your group chat.

3. What are “demographics” and why is it important in social media?

Demographics are the breakdown of the users of the apps. These are broke down not only by age, but also by gender and location, time of day, minutes used per day, and many other factors.  It is very important for marketing to know these demographics so they know which age group or gender to target with their advertising and when.

4. Explain any demographics that stand out among the three social media sites you listed above. (More popular with a specific age group, are majority of users male or female, married or single, employees or self-employed, etc.)

Wow there are more male (56%) Facebook users than female (44%) Facebook users! The largest age group is 25 to 34. Average time spent on Facebook per day is 38 minutes. (apparently I’m above average 😉

YouTube demographics include 72% of all female internet users and 72% of all male internet users. The largest age group for YouTube is 15 to 25 year olds. The average user over 18 spends 41.9 minutes a day on YouTube!

Whatsapp is used by 25% of Americans and 33% of the world’s population. This makes it the most used messaging platform. 54.5% are male and 45.5% are female. The largest age group for Whatsapp is 26 to 35 year olds. Users are 98% more likely to open a message from Whatsapp than from email!

5. On average, how much time do users spend on each social media site during a day, week or month? Provide a resource that supports your answer.

Facbook users spend on average 38 minutes per day.

YouTube users spend on average  41.9 minutes per day.

Whatsapp users spend on average  28 minutes per day. They open the app 23 to 25 times per day.

6. Which of the three social media networks is growing the fastest? Why do you think that is?

Although Facebook is still the fastest growing at 7.27%, it’s growth has slowed down considerably. I think they have pretty much saturated their market. Everyone who wants Facebook already has it.

Whatsapp is poised to overtake Facebook if they continue to increase their reach. Their current growth rate is 6.25%

7. How are the majority of visitors accessing these three sites (computer, mobile device, tablet)?

95.1% of Facebook users use their mobile device to access the platform.

More than 70% of users are using mobile devices to watch YouTube

Whatsapp is designed to be used on a mobile device. Though it can be used on a desktop as long as the mobile device is connected to it.

The Top 10 Social Media Sites & Platforms 2021 (searchenginejournal.com)

Social Media Demographics to Inform your Strategy in 2021 | Sprout Social

WhatsApp Statistics for 2020 — amoCRM

70 Intriguing WhatsApp Statistics: 2021 Usage Facts & Insights – Financesonline.com

The Tops Social Media Sites – Data And Insights For 2020 (garyfox.co)

Which is the fastest growing Social Network in 2020? ( Its not who you think!) | Target Internet

Social Engineering and Phishing continue to be a huge problem in many companies, including the company where I work. Social engineering is the tactic of manipulating someone to divulge sensitive or confidential information. This information can then be used for fraudulent purposes. This type of manipulation targets human vulnerabilities and is often considered human hacking.

A social engineer will usually pose as a legitimate person and build trust with their victim. This allows them to gather information as they build trust with their victim. This process may only take the span of a few hours, but can also continue for several months while the attacker continues to gather information.

Social engineers often pose as trusted individuals in your life. These may include: a friend, coworker, boss or even your own bank.   The most common one at my work tries to trick you into thinking it is from the CEO.  These emails may contain malicious links or downloads. They may also ask for private or secure information. I personally have received such emails from my bank with urgent request for my personal information. These emails are worded in such a way as to evoke an emotional response. They tell you that this is a most urgent manner and must be dealt with immediately. The most important thing is to slow down and think if it really makes sense. If it seems off or unusual definitely stop and verify the information.

The most common phishing scam that I see at my job is a fraudulent email from the boss/CEO. It’s usually something like “Hi, I am out of the office today and I need you to go right now and buy $$$ of gift cards. Email me back when you have the gift cards. “ This email will look legit on the surface. But if you look at the actual sender you can see that yes it uses his first and last name, but it is not from our email @ofco.com. And it is usually sent to around 5 – 10 people in our organization. Us older folks recognize the scam and just shift delete. We also realize that he has a whole box of gift cards in his office. We would never need to go buy any. But the boss will get a little flurry of people calling or stopping in to ask “Did you send that email?” The best practice is just to slow down and really look at the email without responding.  If something seems off it usually is. Better to be safe than sorry.

5 Common Hacking Techniques for 2021 (mitnicksecurity.com)

What is social engineering? A definition + techniques to watch for (norton.com)

Cyber Crime — FBI

Cybersecurity, as defined by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, is the art of protecting networks, devices, and data from unauthorized access or criminal use and the practice of ensuring confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information.

The many dangers of poor cybersecurity could include malware erasing your entire system, an attacker breaking into your system and altering files, an attacker using your computer to attack others, or an attacker stealing your credit card information and making unauthorized purchases. There is no guarantee that even with the best precautions some of these things won’t happen to you, but there are steps you can take to minimize the chances.

Five common digital threats of 2020 that could potentially affect our company are as follows:

Phishing Attacks

Phishing scams are used to steal user credentials for both on-premises attacks and cloud services attacks. Phishing attempts are now being launched through cloud applications as opposed to traditional emails. As more and more documents are stored via cloud applications this will become a more common target.

Remote Worker Endpoint Security

Due to the Corona Virus pandemic 2020 saw record numbers of people working from home. While this option worked well for many who could work remotely it also brought with it many new security challenges. Remote workers often work without any network perimeter security and mobile devices can often end up concealing signs of potential phishing attacks and other cybersecurity threats.

Cloud Jacking

Cloud Jacking is one of the most prominent cybersecurity threats in 2020 due to the increasing reliance of businesses on cloud computing. These attacks will be carried out to eavesdrop, take control of and even modify sensitive files and data stored in the cloud

Sophisticated and Targeted Ransomware Attacks

Ransomware attacks are a major concern for businesses. The effects of a single ransomware attack can be extremely damaging to small and midsize businesses, leading to exorbitant costs associated with downtime and recovery.

Mobile Malware

Due to the increasing number of employees working from home more mobile devices will be in use than ever before. These mobile devices can potentially store large amounts of sensitive data. Mobile malware is designed to specifically target mobile phone operating systems.

We have many areas that could potentially be used to gain sensitive information. Email continues to be at the top of the list. Regardless of the amount of security in place we continue to see emails that could result in security threats. Email filters have an average 10.5-15% failure rate, so you need to practice security awareness to keep our information safe. We are seeing an increase in emails that at first glance look to come from someone internally. But on closer examination you will see that they are using the person’s name with a different email server.

As we are still seeing large numbers of our organization working from home those accessing our servers and software remotely must be especially vigilant for security threats. Company computers must only be used for company business. The potential for picking up malware from random surfing of the web is a constant threat.

Also due to an increase in remote workers is an increase of using shared cloud documents. These documents can be shared by many users and can often contain very sensitive information.

Out of date security programs are also a potential for threats. If not updated properly on all devices this could be a definite risk for a security breach.

Also be wary of meeting invite from outside our organization or from unusual email addresses. These often contain links that if clicked on can release malware or ransomware. Be sure you look before you click.

My recommendations as CIO are mostly focused around training and prevention.

All employees will receive quarterly training updates on proper email security. These will be carried out by department with each supervisor personally gaining each team members signature after completing the training module.

All company computers being used remotely will be update with security software monthly instead of quarterly. Additional firewalls will be in place to prevent a breach from the computers of our remote employees.

Additionally the only mobile devices to be used for company business must be provide by the company. You may not use any personal device to access company information.

The company cloud documents will also get an extra layer of security. Access will also be restricted to only necessary personnel.

IT will be upgrading our security software immediately. Security threats are constantly changing and we must change with them to ensure our continued safety.

https://us-cert.cisa.gov/ncas/tips/

https://blog.techboston.com/social-engineering-red-flag

https://www.kaseya.com/blog/2020/04/15/top-10-cybersecurity-threats-in-2020/

I am interested in the best way to reduce a PDF file size without losing quality. I found and watched 3 different tutorials on youtube. All of the tutorials were very well done though in different styles and used different software or sites. They all seemed to be made by someone very knowledgeable but only one was an actual professional tutorial site.

The first tutorial I watched was by Enix Tutorials. While this was pretty easy to follow I did find the music a little distracting. They showed 2 methods. The first method used Adobe Acrobat. It was simple and straightforward. This is probably the method I would use most often. The 2^nd method they showed used a site called Smallpdf.com This site was also pretty easy to use. Just drag and drop the PDF and choose the level of compression.

The second tutorial was from Tech Related Tips. They used an online program called Ilovepdf.com This method was very simple to use. Simply upload the PDF to this site. Then select the compression level. The narrator did a very good job explaining the process step by step.

The third tutorial was from Learning Excellence. This method showed how to compress a file with Adobe Acrobat. I found the ominous music extremely distracting. The pace was really very slow and this video probably could have been completed in about half the time. I also thought the motions and effects used with the mouse circling each step to be a bit annoying. It could have just show clicking the button.

Out of all of these I would probably use the Enix Tutorial because I would prefer to compress off line. And it was easy to follow. Tech Related Tips also seemed easy to use. I will definitely try this method. The third tutorial from Learning Excellence I would not ever use.

How To Reduce Size PDF file Without Losing Quality – Compress PDF document – YouTube

How to Compress PDF File Size | Reduce Size of PDF File – YouTube

How To Compress PDF File Size Offline – YouTube