A couple weeks ago, I saw a commercial for USPS on TV (the first clip on the video embedded in the webpage). Apparently, this advertising campaign was started last year because USPS lost $10 million in the last fiscal year. I found this discussion about why the US Postal Service is struggling, which I think has some good points, like what would happen if it went out of business, and how FedEx and UPS would have reign over mailing prices.
Anyway, the commercial got me thinking about how secure our paperless, digital forms of storing/sending information really is. It says, "A refrigerator has never been hacked. An online virus has never attacked a cork-board." This is true, but my credit union highly encouraged me to go with paperless statements a couple years ago, claiming it was more secure, so I did. The nice thing about it is that in order to view my statements, I have to log into my bank account online, so I feel very secure about it. They claim that it is a greater risk for people to steal my statement from my mailbox or the garbage than online.
But what about other kinds of information? What about credit card numbers and buying things online? What about businesses storing sensitive information on networks and servers? Here is a website with tips for individuals and businesses for protecting online data. I think there are definite issues with security of digital data, but I think that it is so much more convenient, earth-friendly, and cost-effective to store and send information online that these benefits outweigh the risk.
On a personal level, I think that most of the responsibility lies on the individual to take the necessary precautions not to share sensitive personal information (especially social security and credit card numbers) online, and to have adequate virus protection on their computers. Still, there are some things we cannot control. A personal experience with this is that I have gotten emails from acquaintances (including a BYU professor) claiming that he or she is stuck in some country and needs money. Prior to this, I had heard about my friend's dad getting his email account hijacked and an email like this sent out from his account. Someone actually did respond, sadly, and lost some money. When my friend's dad finally regained access to his account, all his emails had been deleted, including all his business ones (he owned his own business). I think it would be very annoying to have my email account hacked, and for my BYU professor, it was due to him using a computer in an internet cafe in France that apparently was bugged. It was no fault of his own.
However, the data shows that small business to medium-sized are quite susceptible to hacking. GFI Software conducted a survey of 200 small to mid-sized U.S. businesses in October 2011, 40% of which have suffered due to hacking. The problem is that small businesses do not take the possibility of being hacked seriously. This person on Yahoo claims there is no way to actually know how many businesses are hacked because businesses don't want to reveal that and cause doubts about their company. I think that this is probably true.
My overall perception is that use of the internet to store and share information has increased the amount of crime. I think this is due to ease of crimes being committed from a removed place, so people can steal with little chance of getting caught.
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