Posted on Monday 29th of January 2007 at 07:33 in The Internet

BBC - we need more digital literacy

Reading an article on the BBC which stated that a higher level of 'digital literacy' is needed. But why? I assumed this was going to be another story of "innocent user gets caught out by phishing" but it wasn't at all.

The Story
In short, important people were being devious by pretending to be someone else, emailing as a grad-student to obtain privileged information from rival companies. Dishonesty on the internet? Surely not?

Obviously this person was caught out because their Gmail account was being forwarded to their real work address, which then replied with the Christmas out-of-office autoresponder. Busted.

The wrong message entirely!
So this article is claiming we need more digital literacy to avoid being caught out when we're doing devious things? It explains why and how emails linger in existence long after you delete them and how this can become your downfall. What?! BBC, we shouldn't be encouraging the dishonest to plan things better because where does that lead us?

The REAL lesson

Should have been focused towards the prevention of harm to the naive, to people who have very basic information needs and are likely to be fooled by phishing attempts. We shouldn't be trying to make life easier for the wrong people.

 

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