Grade A Internet News

Posted by Pamela S. on Tuesday, July 24th, 2012

Oh, the Wonderful World Wide Web; what would we do without it now? You can build yourself a whole new life on the Internet. You can lurk in other people’s lives. Remember when you were in grade school and they taught “current events?” Really, how current were those events? On the Internet, you can see news as it is happening. Here is the latest Internet news.

Maybe your child isn’t doing that well in school. A Pennsylvania mother decided to take matters into her own hands when she allegedly hacked into her children’s school computer and changed their grades.

Catherine Venusto, 45, an event coordinator at Lehigh University, had previously worked for the Northwestern Lehigh School District. It is believed that she used the username and password of Superintendent Mary Ann Wright to hack into the system. She allegedly changed her daughter’s grade from an F to an M (medical), in June 2010, and her son’s grade from a 98 to a 99, in February, 2012. What? All that illegal activity for one grade point?

Venusto is also accused of reading confidential emails and other documents. She faces three counts of unlawful use of a computer and three counts of computer trespassing and altering data. Way to go, Mom! This is not the way to advocate for your child. Most of us try to lead by example and discourage our kids from cheating.

This also points out another reason to regularly change your password. Venusto accessed the school computers with the superintendent’s password a year after she worked there. Trust me, I know. As I wrote in a previous post, one of my passwords was included in the Yahoo! hack a few weeks ago.

An article in Infosecurity Magazine points out that your children’s use of social networks could lead to your password being cracked. Using information from your son or daughter’s Facebook page, such as tagged names on photos, hackers could follow the digital bread crumbs from one site to another. They could then build a profile on you and put together enough information to come up with possible usernames and passwords. The article quotes a study from Experian, which found “Consumers now have an average of 26 separate online logins but just five different passwords.”

I wrote about the use of infographics a while ago, basically complaining about how bloggers and other websites are using infographics instead of words, and the effect it has on our ability to assimilate information. Now I am going to be a hypocrite once again and use an infographic. OK, I admit, they come in handy to explain something that might take 500 words to describe.

LexisNexis commissioned a study in partnership with PoliceOne.com “to better understand the current role of social media in law enforcement investigations.”

Here is the result of the response of over 1,200 federal, state and local law enforcement professionals (click here to see a larger version of the infographic):

 

An article on PoliceOne.com titled “Beware of Police Impersonators Online” shows that even those of us who use the Internet to investigate others can let our guard down when using social media. The bad guys are pretending to be law enforcement personnel online in order to befriend other police officers or obtain information.

It is sad, but you can’t trust anyone online, unless you know them personally. We get scammed, ripped off and let down by people in real life too, but it is so much easier for criminals and those with some kind of agenda to conduct these activities online. Be safe.

Former FBI Assistant Director Tom Sheer has recruited the best from the FBI, DEA, IRS and Secret Service to build a formidable team at Sheer Investigations. Our private investigators have the sensitivity and experience to handle the most delicate investigations.