ECE 912: Hacking Human, Nolan and Levesque

This week's reading was really interesting because in one way it scares me like I'm sure that would be anyone's natural reaction but at the same time how much I'm actually scared by it I'm unsure of. I spend a lot of time on the internet and I'm quite sure if someone looked hard enough they'd find quite a lot of information about me. I frequent online journals and online communities, so quite a lot of my personality, what I like and dislike is out there. What this article says about human hacking I was aware of prior to reading this. Especially after completing the google labs in which we really were able to see google's true capacity. And because of search engines like google, you can find out stuff about just anyone...even google's image search stores people's private photos. In one light...all of this can be negative such as is the case with things like human hacking..and it seems dangerous to have yourself on the internet but quite honestly it's hard to avoid. Like the article states, sometimes information about you is on the internet without your knowledge or your control. This can also happen in real life, if someone wanted to find out information about you, they easily can...but again, like the article stated, that would be in real-time, the internet let's you do this through the past...with the living and the dead. Scary stuff. I think what it boils down to for me is that I don’t see why someone would waste their time watching me through the internet?...and the stuff that they can find out about me i put out there anyways, so i mean if they knew what music i listen to and what i had for dinner last night...so what? and stuff like my address or my phone number, you can get that in the yellow pages, i don't see the difference. So, although it scares me, I don't think it's something we need to spend our time scared about...there's a lot more likely scenarios I'd be scared about...like we mentioned in class, getting your wallet stolen.

Also, this "human watching" can be done in a positive light. Someone who you are trying to find maybe from elementary school or someone you just lost contact with; the internet could be a successful aid in reuniting people. Google has a new function, which allows people who have lost family members and friends from hurricane Katrina and Rita, to find each other. In this capacity, I can see positive benefits to it.