Something Dave and I have been talking about a lot is trust.  This is an old topic that is coming into sharper focus as the years go on.  In simple terms, a trusted environment is one in which other members can be assumed to be who and what they appear to be:  that email from your Mom’s Facebook account, is legit, right?  The problem is that the Internet is not a trusted environment and requires validation.  How far we validate and require people to authenticate depends on the amount of risk we want to accept.  Reading a text based email from a long lost friend is probably ok but opening an attachment … probably not.

I’ve been reading some great work by Daniel Solove about the history of some of the issues we’re experiencing on the Internet.  (Props to David Mortman for making me aware of this guy)  Solove talks at length about how some social dynamics are distorted on the Internet in ways they aren’t in the physical world.  An ill-advised comment on Twitter could haunt you forEVER!

When we started using the Internet it was an insulated place and although true authentication was difficult, there were so few people using it, a phishing email would have seemed absurd.  Many people who are using the Web today, see it in terms of social media;  the friendly screens of Facebook or Twitter.  This is a confusing mix of real world friends and family and typical Internet ‘friends’.  Though even our relationships with some of these remote acquaintances is that of close friends.  Seen through the lens of Davezilla (click image for larger, downloadable version):

Part of the problem is that we’ve lost the healthy fear we once had of the Internet.  One of the results is that bad things are becoming more frequent.  Symantec’s Threat Report tells part of the story:  Between 2002 and 2008, new malware reported each year is exploding.

To be clear:  I think the benefits of all of the technology far outweigh the problems.  We just need to make sure we’re following some basic rules for this bad neighborhood.  We’ll never be able to eliminate all of the risks of using the Internet.  But you can reduce it to a manageable level making it much less likely that you’ll have problems.

Commonsense Media has a some great resources for Internet safety.

What are your thoughts about how we should be approaching this issue?

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