Cyber Privacy

Blog time again. As most things pretty much turned computer-based /networked, our physical labor places shift significantly. Network indeed makes our life a lot easier. If you still find someone who doesn’t share /download, shop or even vent on the internet, you are talking to a wrong species. However, while virtual collaborations dramatically ease our life, problems also occur, like nefarious uses of private information resources.

As much as I love internet shopping, privacy somewhat becomes the biggest concern. As we’ve learned in class, many companies only send out little samples or coupons in order to retain buyer’s loyalty. The story lies behind: to achieve possessing customer profile, updating mailing list, etc, shoppers’ information have already been shared and passed on to other cooperators.

Therefore, in order to protect ourselves from being violated or any kind of fraud or tort, we hafta learn cyber privacy ahead of time. Read terms and conditions before we click on ‘accept’, be aware of hidden catches and be considerate while using public computers. Also, to understand privacy better, I’m thinking the only way is to read more and always be prepared.

Text Encryption - ROT 13

In previous classes, we’ve discussed hardware and operating systems. However, what really caught my eyes was the text encryption part, ROT 13.

Ultimately, encryption is used to encode a message to the unreadable cipher text so that to achieve data security.  ROT 13 as an algorithm, it encrypts data by swapping positions of the first 13 letters to the next 13. Because of its super simple encryption schemes (you can obtain the original message just by encrypting the encrypted message again), ROT 13 is not expected to be used for the purpose of security.

It is a bit confusing that now that the cipher text is so simple, yet why would people still want to use ROT 13? What is the implementation of ROT13? Ergo, I checked it up on the internet, and found out that the feature of ROT 13 allows us keep messages that contain obscene/ sensitive matters from unnecessary disputes, block spams, discourage show spoilers or hide the answers to riddles. Surprisingly, many cellphone apps we’re using today implements ROT 13 just because it provides such a simple way to obfuscates data, par exemple, Apple. In the iPod Notes Feature Guide, it states that ROT 13 is “used to make a "museum mode" presentation a little harder to steal and modify.”