Social Engineering Task #6

Execution: My task was to take a picture of stranger's house and/or car keys.  I was successful in taking a picture of a stranger's house as evidenced below:

 

Narrative/method: My approached to this task was to see if I could observe someone entering their home but while driving home from work, I drove by the house above and noticed a man sitting at his dining room table working on a laptop.  It is hard to see in the picture above but I have circled where the man is visible. It was simple to pull over and take this picture without anyone noticing me.

 

Application: It was very easy to see this man since the lights are on and his curtains are not drawn.  It could be easy for a hacker to conduct a war driving attack on this home and perhaps steal personal information from his laptop, home network, or infect it with a virus to create a zombie or add it to a botnet.

Ethical reflection: I felt like a Peeping Tom when I was talking this picture.  What someone does in the privacy of their own home is their business and I believe it was unethical to violate this man's privacy by taking this picture.  Perhaps he should close his blinds but that still doesn't excuse what I did.  In my opinion, the only circumstances that would make this morally right would be if a law enforcement officer had reasonable suspicion that criminal activity was taking place in this residence and was conducting surveillance to obtain probably cause for a search warrant.

Social Task #6

My Task : Get a favor  from a fellow player.

Did I Accomplish it: Yes

Method: When our class was over and we were about to leave. I knew that i have to complete my task and it was a good time to do that. So, I just told one of fellow player that I can drop you home because we are going in same way. He said OK. So, on the way home, I get him drive-thru lunch. And then I dropped him and when he was saying thank you, instead of saying "no problem" , I said, "of-course , its what friends do for each other" and I left. Later I called him in night and said that I have to complete my assignment by midnight and I am busy with my work, can you help me with that. (I had already submitted my assignment). He actually did helped me and sent the whole assignment done.

Application: Doing favors to others couldn't be that dangerous but it does effect the one who do the favor. It takes you time. As the quotes says, " Whenever you say yes to favor, you say no to million other things". Sometimes, people really needs you help. So it depends on the situation.

Ethical Reflection: The key part is reminding your fellow player that they can return the favor, it is called rule of reciprocity. This strategy takes a lot of pressure out of asking for favors. Apparently, once you help someone out, you'll feel like you deserve their help and won't worry so much about annoying them. Meanwhile, they'll probably feel like they owe you one and won't think twice giving toy what you need.

Ethics Assignment - March 6

We have both a moral obligation and duty to protect our privacy. Anita Allen makes a good point about privacy being important to our overall well being. It promotes dignity, freedom, and protects individuals from unwarranted criticism. These are all key elements needed to live in a prosperous civil society.

Privacy is both an individual and collective effort. In Anita's argument for individual efforts she heavily implies that "we have to be open to the possibility that some of what we do and enjoy doing may not be ethically good or best" to which she goes on to reference the Anthony Wiener conundrum. Despite being his own private matter this extended well passed himself and unfortunately his family also felt the consequence. In this example it is our duty to protect our privacy in order to not hurt the privacy of others by the sphere of influence your actions may have in regards to someone else. Individual efforts also include self preservation methods for privacy such as passwords, what is shared, and to whom it is shared to.

There is and should be a collective effort at the enterprise/government level for privacy. Transparency to what information is stored, for how long, who it is shared to, why is it shared, etc. At the same time the collective public need to make strides to better educate themselves as to what their privacy actually looks like while using a service or giving out information. I do not like how the "Terms of Service contracts" are implemented where everyone is basically forced to agree to. There are huge implications on privacy there but the language is too dense and too long for most people to actually take the time to read. The collective efforts should focus on making that agreement more clear and accessible at the company side whilst there needs to be a conscious effort individually to understand what it is we're all really in agreement to.

Ethics Assignment - Privacy 2

In answer to the question, do we have a moral obligation or duty to protect our privacy, I agree with Allen in her statement, “[i]f the experience of privacy is important to human dignity and wellbeing, it is something individuals with a choice should not choose to carelessly discard or give away.”  In this country, we allow people to vote at the age of 18 because we believe they are capable of making sound judgements.  Therefore, an adult can make an ethically sound decision to share whatever information they want.  According to Allen, this makes me a privacy libertarian, but I believe that when you make a decision to share information, you must live with the consequences.  However, in some cases, people are not aware of the consequences because they are not informed about how their information is used.  Here, I agree with Allen’s statement that Big Data amounts to digital surveillance. How companies are using our data is unethical, therefore, I believe it is a collective obligation to protect individual privacy.

Prior to the Internet, if I wanted to research a topic, I could go to the library and browse the information without someone recording where or what I was looking at.  With advanced technology, vast amounts of information is available at my fingertips and I should be able to use it without unwanted surveillance.  For example, market researchers are taking advantage of technology to watch what people are doing on the Internet to pinpoint their preferences and target them with direct advertising.  Free enterprise is the problem.  We allow companies to take advantage of us by offering conveniences then using the information collected for other means, such as making a bigger profit by tracking purchases to ensure they offer products that appeal to the larger masses.  I do not agree with Allen that individuals have a moral responsibility to protect their own privacy.  In my option, this is the equivalent to victim blaming.  If I do not want my house to be burglarized, I can get a home alarm system and make sure all my doors and windows are locked.  But what if a burglar breaks the window, steals my jewelry, and leaves before the police (having been notified by the alarm company) arrive?  Is it my fault that I was burglarized? Did I not do enough to protect my home?  If I choose to shop online and make sure that the website I use encrypts my credit card information but it gets stolen anyway and I am the victim of identity theft, is it my fault because I chose to shop online? 

If I want to save money at the grocery store, I need to get a free discount card so I can get some items at a reduced price.  The grocery store is now monitoring which items I’m purchasing to learn what interests me, as well as other consumers, to know what products are popular and what their target audience is.  In short, they are trying to make more money.   I could choose to keep my purchases private by not signing up for the card but perhaps I am on a tight budget and need to provide for my family as frugally as possible.  The grocery store chain is using my financial situation to their advantage and this is unethical.  Collectively, we should be blaming the users of the personal information that is being collected, not the people that are offering it up.  Of course we still need to make good judgements about what is shared.  But as Allen states, we need to “push business and government to address the complex threat to privacy posed by Big Data.”

Privacy writing

When (if ever) is it right to intrude on another's privacy?  Is privacy a "right?"

Good question and depends on who you ask and what the perimeters are.  As discussed in the paper by Allen we see that she uses many divers areas to conclusion at the end of her paper that individuals typically don't spy, while it is the government who does spy for the country's protection.  My favorite approach or example of this good vs. bad question of spying is the one regarding children.  It is said that the brain doesn't fully develop until the age of 25.  A person below this age usually doesn't think with the prefrontal cortex of the brain to make rational judgements.  People over the age of 25 do better with this task.  Because teens are more emotional they might, for instance, meet up with a stranger they met over the internet, who could then harm them.  Teens tend to make more emotional decisions.  Because of this it is a good idea to "spy" on your children.  Outside of that I feel that privacy is a "right."  It is a right because we need our own personal space, without judgements made about us.

In your post contextualize your ideas in relation to Allen or Warren and Brandeis.

I feel that Allen has a broader idea about spying.  She uses lots of examples and includes one used by Hewlett Packard.  They overstepped their boundaries, to the point of potentially exposing other privately held companies  Had their information been brought to the forefront, there might have been larger consequences and the issue at hand could have gotten out of hand.

Warren and Brandeis seem to be come to a smoother transition in their thoughts regarding privacy and spying.  They go from "The right to be let alone," to the ever growing changes in the tech society such as gathering data.  Times have changed at a very fast pace and we can use the data that is so out there to either help us, by taking that data such as following our food choices to helping us make better food choices when we shop, to using them in a bad way by purposely exposing their health records, which might be used against you discriminatory manner.

Please discuss how you could apply your beliefs about privacy to a decision you might make about whether or not to apply techniques that you have learned in our course so far, such as Google hacking.

It was my task to get a classmates address and send them a letter to their house.  Someone's address is a personal piece of information, all the way back to the "White Pages"  You could choose to be 'unlisted" on purpose to privatize your information.  It can be done again if you are not interested in having your information on the internet.  Do I believe in using information against someone in a harmful way?  No, I don't.

I politely explained my task to them in an email, and knowing I am a classmate, could they please  give me their address.  So I could send them their letter for class.  I didn't get a response, so I dropped it.  They obviously don't care to give out that information, so I dropped it.

Social Engineering Task #5

My task was to convince a fellow player that my name is something else than what it is. I failed this task.

I made two acquaintances while in this class and we exchanged contact information so that we're able to reach each other outside of class. When it came down to put my name as a contact I tried to convince them to put me as "William" because that was my "real name." Obviously not true and my fellow players caught on that was I trying to lie about my name and even correctly assumed I was trying to do something related to my task. Even after I tried to deflect it away that it wasn't part of my task they weren't budging on it.

Convincing someone your name is something else than what it really, especially without proof, gives you the ability to be who ever they want without question. This can be applied to online faking your name just as much as in person. "Hey, I'm the IT guy (insert name here) sent come look at that computer" without proper verification can lead to serious problems.

While I wasn't able to convince my fellow players of a fake name because they know my name and have means of verifying (through the readily available names on Moodle) interactions outside of the classroom can be very different. At this point we're all vigilant social engineerists (pretent that's a real word) but to those unsuspecting victims I could very well be a William. No one normally asks to verify your name in person, usually they don't even consider the possibility of me using a fake name in the first place. A wrong way to abuse this would be to impersonate a staff member by name so they can get access to places they wouldn't otherwise have. Sometimes companies are so big that they don't know people by face but instead remember their names and positions. An acceptable way of convincing someone of a fake name (or in this case something?) is when making user profile accounts. I hardly ever use my real name on anything online if I can help it. I think it's alright if someone chooses to hide their real name with a fake name when making online accounts.

ASSIGNMENT: Ethics blog post, due March 6

By March 6 please make a post to this blog addressing the question that we are engaging with this week for the second half of our unit on privacy: Do we have a moral obligation or duty to protect our privacy?   Why or why not?  Is this obligation collective, individual, or both?  

In your post, reference the two Anita Allen readings that we read in advance of class on February 28, relate your ideas to at least one real-life example, and defend your reasoning with good, persuasive argumentation.  Please make this post no later than 11:59 PM on Monday, March 6.