The digital inheritance is waiting

Hardly anybody likes to deal with the issue “death”.  Often one puts off making a will for as long as possible. By now there is a classical will for your digital inheritance. At least online we can live forever nowadays because the Internet hardly – or very, very slowly – forgets anything.

In our digital world we no longer just pass on money or houses but also data, accounts, and online activities. This can be quite expensive because most of the online registrations are liable to costs and are not automatically terminated with the death of the user. The heirs are obliged to take care of the digital inheritance. During their (online) life most Internet users give very little thought to what should be done with their digital inheritance after their death. Continue reading The digital inheritance is waiting

The most serious Internet threats in 2013

Today the Safer Internet Day 2013 is taking place. It is the tenth edition of the event that pays attention to threats on the Internet. The aim of the EU-launched day is to make the Internet a safer place especially for children and teenagers.

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This year the Federal Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media, BITKOM, has listed ten of the most serious Internet threats:

  1. Drive-by-Downloads of malware
  2. Trojans / Worms
  3. Attacks on databases and websites
  4. Virus kits
  5. Botnets
  6. Denial-of-Service-attacks
  7. Phishing
  8. Data loss
  9. Rogueware/ Scareware
  10. Spam

Continue reading The most serious Internet threats in 2013

Privacy and the Ballot Secrecy

The presidential election in the US is over and we all congratulate Barack Obama on four more years in the White House. After a convincing victory he now starts his second term. He is now, after Bill Clinton, the second democratic President to be re-elected since the Second World War.

Speaking of election: This also includes the ballot secrecy. The following is stated on Wikipedia:

The secret ballot is a voting method in which a voter‘s choices in an election or a referendum are anonymous. The system is one means of achieving the goal of political privacy.”

Secret ballot. In slight contradiction to this are the facts about a survey saying that 22 % of  registered voters in the US have shared their vote on Facebook, Twitter & Co. Social network users between the ages of 18 and 29 seem to be the most communicative voters. Continue reading Privacy and the Ballot Secrecy