Alex Yost Blogs

Microchips may soon be making a big appearance. Microchips are the size of a grain of rice, that goes between your thumb and index finger. Microchips are able to be used for any task that used RFID technology. One company in Wisconsin is allowing their employees to implant a microchip into their hand. Implanting a microchip into this company’s employees allows them to do tasks like swiping into the office and pay for food at the cafeteria. According to https://www.asml.com/en/technology/all-about-microchips/microchip-basics, microchips are a set of electronic circuits on a small flat piece of silicon. Microchips can also be called IC or Integrated Circuit.

The microchip was first engineered by Robert Noyce and Jack Kilby, in 1959. Microchips were first created to be used for the logic part of computers. Microchips can now be used for many different reasons, but the newest reason is to speed up users daily routines. According to https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/technology/innovation/technology-under-your-skin/, microchips can be used for anything from accessing your home, gym, office to storing emergency contact details or social media profiles. But those are just the positives to chips.

With using microchips in your hand their come risks with it, one of the risks being it would be easier for hackers to access an abundance of information about you or your company. Some other risks include bad tissue reactions, incompatibility with MRI’s, or even electrical hazards.  Just like with every new technology risks are apart of it, but since microchips in humans are newer, the long term effects are not known. Implanting chips in humans can allow people to access information like your location, spending history, driving habits and more which comes with the risk of your safety overall. If the creators and people working on the microchips do not set boundaries as to what information can be found with microchips by anyone in the world, I think microchips will hurt our society because of the unsureness in the safety aspect.

Microchips can be really positive for our society like making our every day routines faster and easier, but it may also be negative if they do allow just about anyone to access your very personal information.

In our day to day lives, almost everybody uses some sort of popular mobile app. The most popular mobile app right now is Tik Tok. Tik Tok is a video-focused social media app. It is a place for users to upload their content but also a place for users to watch content that creators post. Tik Tok has been downloaded by over 1.5 billion users in the App Store and Google Play. With that said Tik Tok has over 800 million active users from all over the world. Tik Tok originated in China in 2016. According to bettermarketing.pub around 70% of Tik Tok’s users are between the ages of 16-24. Tik Tok is the most popular mobile app with over 800 million active users.

Another very popular mobile app is Facebook. Searchenginejournal.com stated 71% of Americans use Facebook. Facebook has over 2.375 billion users monthly worldwide. According to blog.hootsuite.com, around 63% of Facebook’s users are men. On average, Facebook users spend around 34 minutes a day on the app. Facebook has been around since February 2004, so over 17 years. Facebook was founded mainly by Mark Zuckerberg. While using popular social media apps there comes so problems with it too. One of those problems being that according to brandwatch.com, Facebook alone has estimated there to be around 81 million fake profiles. Facebook is the second most popular mobile app with 2.375 billion users monthly.

With every popular mobile app there are things you expect, do not expect, the goods and the bad, but overall Facebook and Tik Tok are the two most popular mobile apps.

In our every day routine through life, we all use some form of cloud-based applications even if we do not know it. Cloud-based services provide information over the Internet.

One cloud-based service that I use almost daily is Gmail. Gmail would not work as well NOT in the cloud because the provider figures out all of the servers and stuff. An advantage to having this system on a distributed network is that Google does the hosting so you do not have to. I personally do not have any privacy or security concerns when I use this system.

Another cloud-based service that I used to use daily is Zoom, the video communications company. Zoom would not work as well NOT in the cloud because it holds all of the access information, and scheduled times to meet. I do not have any privacy concerns as long as the password to a Zoom does not get leaked so that way not just anybody can join in and hear all the information you talk about.

Cloud-based services are everywhere in our every day life. I feel like they are a way to help communicate to each other and it be protected.

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

The top 3 social media sites in 2020 were Instagram, then YouTube, and then Facebook.

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

Instagram is used as a way for people to share pictures with each other, and also a way to get advertisement out there. YouTube is used most commonly to share video tutorials and entertainment purposes. Lastly, Facebook is used for advertisement and other content for people mainly 30 years and older.

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

Demographics are used to classify people into categories like age, race, gender, and more. You use demographics in social media to better the potential audience you can reach on each platform.

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.)

The majority of Instagram users are female, over 546 million users are. And over 528 million users are male. Out of all of the YouTube users, 56% of them are male, which means 44% are female. And lastly, out of all of the Facebook users 43% of them are female and 57% are male.

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.

According to https://techjury.net/blog/time-spent-on-social-media/, Instagram users spend an average of 28 minutes on the app a day. Also Tech Jury says that on average YouTube users spend around of 24 minutes a day on the app . Facebook users spend an average of 33 minutes a day on the app.

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

According to Don Creative Group, YouTube is growing the fastest with around over 2 billion people using it daily. YouTube is growing fast because it has become a place for people to share their content and gain a following.

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

Most people access Instagram on their phone unless they use their computer for a business or brand. As for YouTube over 70% of users access it through their mobile devices. And for Facebook 98.5% of their users access it through a mobile device as well.

There are many ways “bad behavior” can take place in an online setting. For example, January of 2018 two 12-year-old girls were arrested after a 12-year-old named Gabriella Green committed suicide after she was cyber bullied. After talking to the police, the two girls confessed to cyber bullying Gabriella and there was evidence found on their phones. The girls started rumors that included saying “Gabriella had STD’s, and called her vulgar names”.

The loss that happened in this particular situation is that Gabriella lost her life, all because of two girls trying to be “cool” and “funny” and call her names and spread rumors. The criminals that were involved in this incident were held accountable when the police arrested them  and searched their phones. It is sad that Gabbie had to lose her life to others being careless, but we can not bring her back so all we can hope for in the future is that others will learn from this incident.

I think that parents can also learn from this. For example, in this particular school district Police said they discovered many children close to the same age with unmonitored social media accounts. So many parents have no idea what their children are doing online. I think everyone needs to come together as a community and make a plan on how they can try and keep kids safer.

Reading articles about this incident I learned and was kind of reminded how mean kids can be behind a screen. They tend to be meaner when they have no one there to say it to in-person. I also realized that many guardians have no idea what is going in their kids lives and even if they do check their social media accounts it is likely that kids are finding a way around their security to be bullies.

As of summer 2020, there are over 5 different types of potential digital threats. One of those being malware. Malware is described as software with spyware, worms, and viruses, which is obtained by clicking a malicious link that then installs the malware on your device. Another potential threat includes Man-In-The-Middle. Man-in-the-middle is when a hacker puts them in the middle of a transaction between two people. The third type of digital threat is the denial of service, which includes a cyber attack that floods a computer. The fourth type of potential threat is Phishing. Phishing is when an attacker uses fake communication to trick the receiver into opening it and sending private information that is valuable to the hacker. The final type of digital threat I am going to talk about is Password Attacks, which include the attacker having access to an abundant amount of personal information that lead to figuring out passwords. Every single day, cyber attackers will continue to hack people unless everyone reads this information to help stop some attackers.

One way my company saves themselves from being attacked by cyber attackers is we limit the number of people who know the password to our entire companies information. By doing this we limit the number of people who can accidentally or purposefully expose the master password. The second way I as the IT Supervisor protect my company is that we developed a Security Policy which defines security protocols for our company. The third way my company protects itself is we regularly install and update our anti-spyware, anti-virus, and anti-malware software. Another action I take to protect my company is to educate my fellow coworkers and employees. I train my employees on the warning signs of cyber attacks, and also what to do if a cyber attack were to take place. The final action the company overall takes to protect from cyber security is to have strict password policies for each employee and business accounts. There are many actions my company and I myself as the IT Supervisor take to ensure we have a safe and anti-cyber attack zone.

As the IT Supervisor and Chief Technology Executive, I have come up with five more precautions my company will take to ensure we are safe from cyber-attacks.  The first precaution we are going to take is to secure our hardware by changing the passwords to more complicated passwords that only the device user knows. The second precaution we will take is to begin encrypting our data so data breaches do not occur. The third precaution is that we will begin backing up all of our data and storing it separately so if hackers lock us out of our system and ask for a ransom to be paid we already have our data backed up somewhere else. The fourth precaution we will begin taking is investing in cyber security insurance that could help save millions in the long run if we were to get hacked an have to pay a ransom. The fifth and final precaution we will begin taking is to teach our employees to avoid unsecured websites that could give cyber attackers direct access to data that is stored on that device. When we begin taking these extra precautions my companies goal is to fully protect ourselves from cyber attacks.

Over the years more and more people have started using user generated content and along with that the contemporary web has changed. Now people of all education or no education about the web are able to set up content management systems. A content management system is a software for computers that is used to manage how you create and modify the content on a website. CMS is used for only websites. According to Kinsta, content Management Systems help you build a website without needing to code it.

There are many differences between using coding and a CMS to build a website. Insight-The Official Influx Blog states if you code a website by hand/yourself you have more control over little details and if something were to go wrong you would probably be able to fix it easier. There are also pros to using CMS, one of them being that multiple people can manage a website using CMS. Another pro to using CMS is that there are templates that you can use to help build your websites.

You might think that CMS’s take away job from website designers, but they help make their jobs easier. If a company wants a quality made website, they are more likely to pay someone to build it for them the way they want so it benefits them in the long run. Also, big companies are most likely not wanting to have to waste their own time building a website they could hire someone else to build.

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