My trust on trial

I can only describe the state of my mind in the last few hours as frantic with a full of anger.

I received an email from my sister and when I opened it, I saw this invitation box below asking me to be her friend (see below). I confirmed her name (Sunghee Park) and her email address. I did not twice think about it and pressed the ‘Yes’ button. At the time, I thought it was some kind of online chatting application, social network, that she wanted me to use. When I clicked the ‘Yes’ button, it asked me to input my password for Hotmail. Yes, in hindsight, that is where I should have stopped and thought about it some more. However, it was from my sister in which I had complete trust.

As I progressed through the signing up pages, I realised that it was an online dating service so I decided to stop in the middle of signing up process (so I thought). As it was from my sister, I was laughing at the thought of my sister wanting me to try an online dating service.

A few hours later, Howard sent me a message telling me that he received the invitation email from Jhoos (on behalf of me). In that flash of seconds, I realised I have been had by a com site. I googled the Jhoos and found that it infiltrates user’s email contact lists and sends out invitations. Even though I halted the process in the middle, Jhoos still sent out invitations to everyone in my contact lists. Coincidently, my sister also did not suspect the invitation because in turn she received it from her friend.

For the rest of afternoon was spent sending out emails to everyone in my contact lists to warn them of the scam and contemplating that I had fallen for a con. Even though I would not consider myself as a tech savvy nor am I an expert on online security, yet, I am aware of online scam and not to open links in emails. Despite knowing all of this, I still felt for it. I feel awful not because I trusted Jhoos invitation unconditionally but because it disguises itself and appears to have been sent by someone we trust, in my case, my sister. My trust was put on trial and it appears to be guilty as charged.

Stalked by Twitter

I am not a regular Twitter user, and I have now found the process of follower association annoying. Today and not for the first time, I have received email notification that I have so and so following my Twitter. This person (supposedly), who is following me, tends to have few hundred followings, but followed only by one or two people. We do know, through inference, that these people are either selling products or of ‘themselves’. However, the issue I have with Twitter is that; I am and get followed by these people without my permission to do so. This is different from say, Facebook, which asks me if I want to be associated with so-and-so person, that I have to accept the invite. Now, Twitter works in a different way, each time I receive the notification of a new follower, I have to log in to my Twitter account so that I can remove the person from my follower list and block them. I do not wish to see my Twitter profile filled with such people who have profile images, featuring a ‘suggestive pose’. When it first happened I felt quite violated and still do. I consider my online profile to be in a minutiae way, a representation of myself and wish to regard my online space to be self-governed. Should I not have a say in who can and cannot follow me? Should I not have control over my online space?

Future Reading

Probably I am not the best person to discuss the likes of ‘the Kindle’ technology as I have never used them. However, I am quite interested to find out about its potential influence on our reading experience.

Previously I have downloaded an e-book legally available on online to my desktop computer but I have yet to turn to the second page, blaming my general disinterest in the e-books’ lack of mobility and accessibility. Whist, I agree with the BBC blog that there are constraints upon e-book readers to take off in the same way that iPod and MP3 players have. However, for me, because of its light weight, I can imagine myself having an e-book reader permanently in my bag as I normally have to think twice about the weight and volume of the book that I want to carry, together with the amount of walking I have to do on that day.

E-book and the reader technology may not be able to completely transform the publishing industry and enjoy the attention that iPod and MP3 have received from the users, however it is too early to rule it out from its potential business and social implications. One of the merits of the digital technology is the fact that it has infinite potential.

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In my previous blog, I have discussed and expressed some concerns over the News Corp’s decision to move to a subscription model. I have extracted a paragraph from the BBC blog which supports my argument.

“Suddenly I realised why a book worked on the Kindle but a paper did not. For me, reading a book is an analogue experience - I start at page one and continue until I've finished. A newspaper, on the other hand, is more random, more interactive. I scan the sections and leap from one article to another, much as I do on the web. That's what is already available to me - for free - on newspaper websites, so why would I pay for a less satisfactory digital newspaper? Newspapers have woken up rather late to the fact that they've been giving away content online which could be monetised through e-readers.”