We Are At High Risk Over The Net

“The internet is a very dangerous world that we all fall into. With the rising innovation in technology, we had all fallen into the culture of social media and had made ourselves vulnerable by the way we use them, may it be FB, Instagram, Twitter, etc. We post every move we do – our hobbies, interests, family and friends – making us readily available for hacking, cyber bullying and other forms of cybercrime. We have been facing this occasionally, like the hacking of our social media accounts, breaches on emails, even searches with Google and other browsing sites.

The three-day training provided by the Foundation for Media Alternatives (FMA) made me aware of these circumstances in my life. I had encountered friends posting unethical messages and status posts and then afterwards claiming that their accounts had been hacked.

There is a high risk on being active over the internet on exposing your identity, providing perpetrators a way on how to victimized you. And that’s what I realized with my own account over the net. I never had the chance to hide my identity, I had been an open book. And the worst of all is that I had even risked the life of others like my children, family and friends. I had exposed everything in my life including my advocacies, which make me much more vulnerable.

It was really time to get serious in securing myself over the internet by means of technical measures I learned in this training.

The most valuable thing I learned from the training is how to handle situations like cyber bullying, gender-based violence and prevention of being victimized over the internet. But it takes guts and seriousness over this matter to have it put into practice. I have learned that we need to allot time and space to be able to apply all the security measures we have learned.

We have to be ready to be secured. Honestly, until now I haven’t decided yet as to when I can apply it with my everyday life. All the technicalities that I had learned is too overwhelming. The fact that it’s very technical, you also have to learn it by heart for you to practice it. It comes with acceptance, as well. What I mean is that, you have to accept the fact that it is not simple and easy. You should be ready and have perseverance for it to work for you. But the whole course had been so helpful and had enlighten me on how to behave over the internet. We tend to be too careless with the way we use social media, apps, blogs, etc. that reveal our whole identity that may lead us in danger”. ###

About the Author: 

Renmin Crisanta Abraham-Vizconde, author of this blog is currently the  Advocacy and Campaign Officer of the Philippine Network of Food Security Programmes, Inc., a non-government organization based in Quezon City, that addresses core issues on food security including conversion of agricultural lands, landlessness, import liberalization, feudal relations of production, backward means of production, migration and urban poverty, unequal food distribution, and generically engineered food.

She is the person-in-charge of technology in their organization. She does website maintenance, online communications and other related functions. Remnin joined the 3-day Digital Security and Online Safety Training conducted by FMA in May 2017 with hope to learn the different types of online threats and gain some technical knowledge and skills.