Episode 28: Internet Safety

Hey y’all. Welcome to Fast Facts for Gen Z. I’m your host, Callie, and I don’t know anything about anything. Join me on my exploration of the world, and I’ll tell you everything you ever, and never, wanted to know, through the eyes of Gen Z.

Today’s episode: Digital privacy, what we’re taught, and what we probably should be taught.

In the mid to late 2000s, we learned about internet safety in school. Now, this was elementary school, so it wasn’t like, super technical, but it was basically just “here are some types of viruses and what they do to your computer in some cute cartoons. Don’t ever click anything ever. Don’t ever open emails ever. Have fun out there!” Which was sort of education, except what third grader has and regularly uses an email address? The “don’t ever click anything ever” advice was pretty decent though, since a lot of websites for small children are heavily advertised because kids are super susceptible to advertising and will beg their parents for things. Some of those ads were probably pretty sketchy if you clicked on them – not predatory or anything, but probably scammy or bad for your computer. So the advice to click nothing was probably a good idea.

The only other common advice I remember was the saying, “Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.” Except, when I was a kid hearing that, the examples were all about popups that claimed you won a gift card, or advertisements that said all we had to do was call a number and we’d be rich. I’m not sure what the dialogue is around it now, but it better be more about media literacy than it was, because “don’t believe everything you read on the internet” is relevant to a lot more than financial scams. Misinformation or “fake news,” if I want to use a buzzword, is so common on the internet because it’s profitable to social media and certain news outlets, and obviously people need to be taught to be aware that the first headline they read might not be true.

Of course, you can’t just tell everyone “don’t believe anything you read on the internet,” because that would be a disaster. A societal-level lack of trust in the news and professional journalism is a literal hazard to democracy. There’s nuance to media literacy, and it’s nuance completely missed.

My parents also tried to teach me about internet safety, but it was motivated by their anxiety, not necessarily for my education. They were worried about the 40-year-old stalkers that apparently lurked on social gaming sites like Club Penguin, AnimalJam, and WebKinz, and that worry led to a complete ban of all internet friends. You don’t get to talk to anybody online that you don’t know in real life. While I think this is a reasonable ban for little kids, internet safety stops being discussed as kids age. I don’t know why, but for me, at least, it just stopped completely. But even now, the energy surrounding online friends is extremely negative in my environment.

When the video game “Among Us” rose to popularity last year, I started to play before enough of my friends were interested enough to play with me. So I played online, with random people that were doing the same thing. We couldn’t talk with voices, only type in the chat feature in-game, and there’s no identifying information on the game, so it’s basically the safest place you can be as far as privacy is concerned. But when I was talking about playing to my parents, their immediate reaction was, “Strangers?? You’re playing with strangers?? Who are they? Can you talk to them???” And even if their words aren’t completely serious and they’re not actually worried, words matter so, so much. When I first got interested in watching Twitch streams, I was terrified to talk in chat, because I had been taught that every stranger on the internet is a bad guy. It’s a shame, too, because it becomes another place where teenagers rebel and then make mistakes.

When there’s a complete ban on something, like a strict curfew or extremely limited screen time, teenagers will break that rule, and then, because there hasn’t been any other discussion, take it to an extreme without noticing. A teenager who was always told never to talk to strangers on the internet might join a Discord server and fall in with people who may be rebelling in their own ways and may act as bad influences. A teenager with a strict curfew is more likely to sneak out and get hurt or break the law. A teenager with extremely limited screen time is more likely to struggle with self-regulating when they live on their own. Parents who are overbearing in this way think they do it from a place of love, but I think they do it from a place of fear. Perhaps those are the same motivation. They are afraid that if they don’t teach their child strict discipline, then the child will be a failure or will be hurt, when in reality, they never give the child space to grow. I don’t know. Just something I’m thinking about.

So, after the quick rundown of don’t click anything for nine year olds, what should we be teaching kids?

Okay, so you know the little message that pops up in the corner of your screen when you go to a new website asking you to accept their cookies? TEACH KIDS ABOUT COOKIES. Cookies influence your online experience SO much. It’s just the word for the data about how much time you spend on a website, what you look at, and why it thinks you’re there. “Bad” cookies are the ones that use that information to build a user profile for you so it can sell your data to advertisers, who will use it to target ads at you, but in reality, nearly all cookies will do that to some degree. I’ll give you an example. Say you’re me, 7th grade, doing a research project for science class on some disease or disorder. I think it was multiple sclerosis. So, like any 7th grade level researcher, you search the words, “multiple sclerosis.” Now, even if WebMD and MayoClinic don’t collect cookies to sell to advertisers, you know who does? Google. I’m pretty sure that Safari doesn’t, but don’t take my word for that. You never know.

You know what prevents cookies from being stored? Incognito mode. You know why nobody would ever intentionally teach kids and teenagers to use incognito mode? You know why. You know. Because how would parents and authority figures snoop through their child’s search history and internet activity if they used incognito mode? How would they get complete control over their child’s privacy? How would they know if *gasp* their teenager is watching porn?? Spoiler alert, guys, your kid’s gonna find their way to incognito mode somehow, and for none of the reasons that they should. Like, when I was researching multiple sclerosis, incognito mode would have been helpful so that I didn’t get medical advertisements about multiple sclerosis for the next month.

So managing cookies and incognito mode helps you to have more control over your internet experience and have fewer of those weird moments where your computer or phone gives you an ad for something you were just talking about. Almost like it’s listening to you… which, depending on the app, it might be. But what else is there?

Well, every computer has an IP address, which is basically like your house’s address, but for your computer in relation to the internet. When the computer sends out a request, like when you type something into google, that request is as if you mailed a letter to the Great Bank of Information, and the Great Bank of Information mailed you a letter back with your search results. An oversimplification, of course, but I’m not going to pretend like I understand anything more technical than that, so here we are. So, just like if your return address was on an envelope, your IP address can be seen wherever it sends a letter. And because your IP address is associated with your computer’s physical location, if someone cared enough, they could probably figure out what city you live in. Or at least, what city your computer is in. Or near. It’s usually not super precise.

You don’t have to be a techy hacker guy to figure this out, either. I recently received a very nice email from a listener, and because she sent it through my transcript website’s Contact page, I was able to see her IP address. WordPress has that in the user data, where your name and email address go when you’re sending a message to someone that way. I’m not sure why, and I’m not sure I love that, but it was useful to me in this situation, because while the email absolutely looked legit and didn’t seem to be asking me for anything, I’ve been taught to trust absolutely nothing. So I wanted to make sure it was real. She mentioned the church she worked for, but it was a pretty non-specific church name, so I searched her IP address, found her city, and was able to confirm that this woman did in fact work for this church. Then, of course, once I sent her work email a reply message and got a response back, I was satisfied that she was who she claimed to be. But I found it interesting that with only a few pieces of information – name, workplace, email address, and IP address – I could confirm her identity in less than five minutes.

This is pretty unusual though. I couldn’t just log on to Twitter, pick someone at random, and find their IP address. That’s not typically information that’s readily available. But Twitter could do that. Wherever you go on the internet, your IP address goes with you. It makes the computer work, I promise this isn’t a bad thing.

But what if there’s a really cool TV show in the UK that isn’t available in the US? Well… how does Netflix know that your computer is in the US? Your IP address. This is one reason some people might use a VPN – a Virtual Private Network. Effectually, it’s a secure, private connection between your computer and the internet, where your IP address can’t be tracked. The way it actually works is by setting up a network of computers that send the request along, sort of like forwarding an email. Your request gets sent to some other computer, which sends it to some other computer, which sends it to some other computer, which sends it to the website. Your IP address isn’t associated with the request anymore, and bam, private connection. You could set one up where the last computer is in the UK, and therefore get access to the UK-specific content you so badly desire.

VPNs can also be used just as privacy tools. I think some universities use them for security that way, though don’t take my word for that. I don’t actually know anything, you know that. There are a lot of privacy tools out there, working in similar ways. The browser DuckDuckGo doesn’t record any of your data, for example, which means it offers a way more secure experience than Google. But I don’t want to sound scary or anything, because it’s okay that some of your information sticks around on the internet. Really, it usually only comes back to bite you if you do something illegal online and they track you down that way. Like, you know, raiding the Capitol building and posting about it on Facebook or bragging about it on Bumble. Fun stuff.

The Internet is a weird place. If the next semester starts off pretty easy next week, I’ll put out an episode more about social media and why it’s good for all the reasons you know and bad for none of the reasons you think. If not next week, then the week after. I have a lot of research to do first. I’ll let you know on Twitter @FastFactsPod whether it’s coming out next week or not.

Thank you for listening to Fast Facts for Gen Z. If you’re new here: hi! Welcome. Stick around if you like it. I release new episodes every single Thursday, and transcripts are available at www.fastfactsforgenz.wordpress.com. This is Callie, signing off.