Highlights

Safety will be there when you keep it safe with your own effort

Your Quote or Supposed Reason

“Digital safety is not true, even when you are told all information you are sending out, has been encrypted.”

Details Of Your Entry

We are told that all information including the text messages that we send out, have been encrypted and only authorised person can read. This may be true or untrue.
Let say a text message is sent out and the destination is your friend. So the message should only be read by your friend and nobody else. However, authorised person can also be a person working in the company that own and control this messenging service.
I have a bad personal experience when I ignorantly share the CDC voucher link over the most popular messenging platform to a needy friend who needs help with groceries. Immediately, over the next few days, I noticed my CDC vouchers were being spent on fast food restuarants instead of groceries. My friend confirmed that she had not used any of the vouchers. From the history of transactions, the thief was living around Bukit Merah estate. I was ready to let the matter pass as it is government’s money and maybe the thief needed the money. On second thought, I realised that my text message had been hijacked and the person could be an employee of the messenging platform or even a hacker into their system. I decided to report to the police station.
In the police station, there is a short queue but only 2 police are working at their own sweet time. I decided to submit an online police report to detail at length what had happened and attached various screenshots of the transaction history showing where the repeated purchases were done every day.
Two days later, a police called on my mobile and asked if the thief was still using the CDC voucher. I told him that the thief was still using one voucher daily. He said that he had notified the department controlling CDC voucher and then a CDC officer called me. She said that there is nothing she can do to stop the thief and I should quickly spent the voucher myself. The thief continued stealing the voucher for the next few weeks. The police was unable to even arrest the thief who was using the CDC voucher in same few established restaurant and supermarkets repeatedly. Well, this experience told me that we have lousy police force and government agencies that cannot even stop or arrest a petty thief, not to mention entrusting our own safety in their hands.
We ensure our physical safety by wearing proper and decent attire, not staying out late or not going to risky places. Similarly, we should ensure our digital safety by being cautious, aware of lurking dangers and definitely not to trust even those reputable digital platforms where all your informations are “encrpyted”.
Without AI, digital platforms still need humans to man the contents and maintain the system. With AI, digital platforms can easily sieve the information they need for whatever purposes deem profitable and useful to the company. In both scenarios, we are not safe digitally if we are too trusting. So to be safe, we should not expose our confidential information that make us vulnerable.
Hope by sharing my ignorant fault, it will bring good realisation to your involvement in the digital world.

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CoolThoughts