Believe it or not, technology runs our days – I mean our daily lives, either you believe it or not! Has it come to your consciousness that you can’t just do without technology, even if you hate it!? If you don’t believe this yet, now is the time to get to know what you’ve been involved with unconsciously. Being technically conscious of what is going on around you is a great gain. There are so many things that may go wrong if you do not take note of your environs. With the influx of recent technological developments and upgrades and the affluence of tech start-ups springing up daily; all thanks to strategic acquisitions taking place of recent; the need to make profit by any means will continue to be the headline of the day. And you might not know the impact this could have on you.
My task is to bring it to your notice – I will be revealing what this mean to you, your loved ones, and family. You may not agree with me that Technology runs you! But here’s why maintaining a technology consciousness mentality in the 21st century is golden, and it will help you in a lot of ways.
…Having a Technology Consciousness mentality in the 21st Century is a great deal!
Your smartphone could hurt you so badly
I don’t know if you are aware before this moment or not, that having a smart phone around you all the time poses a great danger to your health. In fact, it does more harm to you than the goods mass media pitched it to be doing in your life. Does that mean we shouldn’t be using smart phone? Absolutely not.
You can use it but knowing how to use it properly will minimize the risk aspect of using it.
Action points:
- Avoid keeping phone in your chest pocket – it is deadly.
- Avoid putting your headphone on while sleeping – there’s high level of radiation taking place between your smartphone and other electrical appliances while it is in use, so, it wont be nice to forget taking it off when you are ready to sleep.
- Avoid picking calls while charging your smartphone – this will pose a high level of danger to your eardrum.
Your car, phone or other device could be used in revealing your whereabouts
Gone are the days when GPS location system was still in its infant stage. Then it becomes difficult to have enough facilities in place to instigate a tracking system (whether for good or bad reasons), not to talk of having such a system installed to track human beings. But with the recent technological advancements in the global positioning system technology, a small mobile tracking chip installed onto your smart phone; automobile, fridge, door, gas cooker, or, even in your pocket consciously or unconsciously; is all hackers need to know your whereabouts.
A total stranger, with hacking knowledge, can have an idea of the person you are without having to move close to you, once they can break into your data through illegal means available at their disposal, and one way you can avoid this is to be conscious of what is going on around you.
Having the knowledge of what you use and how it works will give you a proper understanding of protecting yourself against any evil device against your security.
Action Points:
- Study the manual of each gadget to know some of its features – know the do’s and don’ts and the pros and cons of how it works.
- Spend more time to know your gadgets – after you must have studied the manual, you need to put the knowledge into use by practicing it so that you could spot when things go awry. Hackers could gain access to your webcam without your permission, if you have prior knowledge of how the camera reacts when you put it on, and when you didn’t, you’ll quickly identify the mal-functionality.
- Put your Wi-Fi off when it is not in use – doing this will save you lot of hassle.
- Cover your webcam lens when not in use.
- Disable automatic downloads and installation of software from website. It is advisable that you should manually download and install software especially if they are not from trusted source.
Also Read: Business Owners, are you be tech savvy enough? You could be losing money, here’s why.
Your homes could be wired to broadcast/transfer sensitive data to outsiders
20st If you’re from the 19th – 20th century era of big head-like television set with no internet access, you may be free from what I’m about to say. But if you are living in this 21st century, you are not excluded from this. According to IBTimes, over sixteen million phones have been infected with malwares which later on expose the owner information to hackers from the outside. After your details have been shared, what the worst would you expect? The next is to wait patiently for when the attacker will launch a stealth hacking attempts at your data.
Most of the attempts reported in 2014 were initiated with the help of an in-house wireless system failure – smartphones being the prime target. Last year, a research was carried out by Norse Corp, a US based data security firm, released a staggering result of 5,840 cyber attacks happening within just 45 minutes in the US. The image below analyse and expand more on how much of these hacking attempts could have taken place in less than 45 minutes in one country alone. What about the figure for the rest of the world?
A staggering report of cyberattacks carried out in less than 45 minutes, all coming from all across the world.
You’re not alone, even when you think you do
Okay, agreed you don’t use some of these tech gadgets, and by that reason, you cannot get entangled in any form of truces from outsiders. But you are WRONG!
Don’t think you are free from hacking attempts, especially if you have children of nowadays around you. They want the latest iPhones, RIM’s Blackberries, and Android phones, so you tell me how they’ll use it without having internet access on any of these gadgets.
The era of being free totally is long gone, unless you are not living, so being technically savvy of what is going on around you; understanding how stuff works around you will save you time, stress, and money.
Conclusion
Technology runs almost everything and according to Alvin Toffler, as “our technological powers increase, the side effects and potential hazards also escalate,” so there is a great need to learn as much as possible about the possible hazards they may arise as we are using them.
Thanks for this article, i guess it should be titled your gadget and you. its just tell our people not to be slave their gadget, or making it be a problem to you. but rather make good advantage of it.
Hi, It is really useful in todays world.