The Internet: A sensitive place

  1. Engage Yourselves:
  2. Objectives
  3. Procedure:
  4. Extensions
  5. Evaluation

Engage Yourselves:

We all know what scams are, but we don't all know where scams are, or how to avoid them, and that is exactly what we will be going over in this section. As a brainstorm activity, discuss a few well known scams with your classmates, and maybe pick up a few things. After the discussion, go to Applications, Office, OpenOffice.org Word Processor, and type in a few scams that you didn't already know about. Once you have completed this, call your teacher over to your workstation, and have him okay you to move on to the rest of the steps.

Objectives

Competencies

Procedure:

First Step: Understanding the ethics of the Internet

Your common sense may very well be the best guiding factor that you have while operating on the internet. You don't want to scam everyone, just like you wouldn't want everyone to scam you. You don't want to participate in illegal activity, because you could end up harming yourself, by giving away personal information, or you could end up in jail. Disobeying the ethics of the internet is a two bladed sword, because by going to bad sites and doing bad activities, you could be infecting your computer with a plethora of virus, some that read your personal records, steal your credit card numbers, passwords, social security numbers, etc., and they might just destroy your system all together. Free stuff, and flashing bannners telling you that you won something are obvious scams... don't click them, because they are probably a trap that will infect your computer. Also, if a site asks you to double check your information... get out of the page, because that is another scam that people use to try and steal your usernames, passwords, etc. The best and easiest way to avoid scams, is use your judgement and don't go to scamming sites--they are pretty easy to point out. Never give out passwords, or other important pieces of information to people who you don't know while using the internet, because then you can really get screwed. If someone somehow gets into your system, they can (and most likely will) destroy your system. They can send in Trojan Horses, which you wouldn't even know were there, and they would destroy your system, only after robbing it of all it's usefull information. Be aware of these threats, and the more you know about them, the less likely you will get scamed. Create a webpage listing internet scams in an ordered list from most threatening to least threatening. Describe each with a very brief paragraph.

Make a list of items that are scams, and describe how to avoid them.

Second Step: Debate an ethical issue on the Internet

Almost everyone is aware of sites where you can buy music. Some people may think, why pay for music, when you could get it for free, which leads us to our ethical debate. Person X wants to use LimeWire (a popular free music p2p (peer to peer) downloading site) to get his music, and Person Y wants to buy there music legally through iTunes. Is Person X right to want to get free music, keeping in mind that although he is downloading music from others, they are downloading music from him?. Or is Person Y correct, only wanting to buy their music? Are both people right?

Extensions

Describe in detail why you should never click on a link from an e-mail that you open up. What harm could this do your computer.

Evaluation

ComponentPoints
Completed Activities/7
Understood Activities/3
Total/10