Journal Entry #3 - Phishing 101

This journal entry is regarding the phishing topic from 9/10 (I just got the time to write this entry). I truly enjoyed the presentation by Mia and Olivia. They were comfortable in front of the class, and the class was engaging a fair amount as well. I also enjoyed their use of videos in their presentation which made it more interesting. Anyways, I learned a few things too. 

I learned that people often use your emotions against you by using things like trust, fear, curiosity, and most prominently, a sense of urgency to get you to bypass any critical thinking and be deceived or successfully phished (probably not an actual term). Again, it's a reminder to pause in everyday life and to be skeptical when things seem a little too good, just like we learned from Dr. Rich Enos and his discussion over propaganda and perception vs reality. For example, someone brought up how a girl tried befriending her but instead was trying to do some fishy (get it?) things on her phone. This was slightly a sad example to hear in class, but it was insightful nonetheless. It showed how much people are willing to go out of their way just to steal your information or profit from your loss by using psychological tactics to morph your idea of what's real and fake.

The most interesting thing from this class period, though, was the video on the Quanta computer vendor and how a different bank account was receiving millions of dollars from Google and Facebook. For such large and wealthy companies, you would think they had more resources to catch mistakes like this from happening. Now, if I'm ever successfully phished (again, not sure if it's a real word), I will feel much better about myself because at least Google and Facebook have been fooled before too.