Identity Theft

Wikipedia defines identity theft as "fraud involving someone pretending to be someone else in order to steal money or get other benefits. " When a persons identity is stolen they will most likely lose large sums of money out of there bank account, because of the person using there identity to purchase many different things. Most people do not know this but there are actually, 5 different types of identity theft. They are:

- Business/commercial identity theft-(using another business name to obtain credit)

-criminal identity theft - which is when one person uses another persons name if arrested by police

- Financial Identity theft- when a person uses someone else's identity to obtain goods and services.

-identity cloning- When a person uses another persons information to assume his/her identity in life on a daily basis.

- medical identity theft- Stealing someones identity to obtain medical care or drugs.

Identity theft is closely monitored today specially to prevent terrorism.

People can steal a persons identity in a number of different ways... One way and probably the most popular way is to steal someones mail, that has the persons personal information on it. Another way is by stealing an individuals credit card... Today another popular choice is by advertising false jobs (specially through craigslist). With the economy the way it is now, and with all the people that are job-less. it makes it easy for this to happen. People post fake jobs and set up interviews... During the interview the interviewer will ask the applicant for there SS # and other personal information. The applicant will feel obligated to give this information to increase there likelihood of getting hired for this fake job.. It's important for people now a days, to keep there personal information to themselves, and NEVER give out your banking information....

Citibank has developed a identity theft protection plan that protect people against these fraudulent purchases... Something other banks are also beginning to do as they realize this problem is only increasing...

This topic is so close to me because my freshman year of college I had lost my Debit card on campus at my school... I did not notice until the next time I went to use my card, which sadly was 3 days later!!! Someone had found my card and used it to buy a video game system and other various electronics.... I had lost 75% of my bank account which was luckily only 600$, but for a college student, that is a lot!!! I contacted my bank, to cancel my credit cards and to see what was my next step. Unfortunately they could only refund me 50% of what was lost, but I guess that was better than nothing... It did teach me a valuable lesson of being more responsible, something Im almost glad that happened.

It was pretty impossible to catch the person who was using my card, I've heard stories of people who steal credit cards, then order merchandise over the internet and have it delivered directly to their homes!!! Therefore the police and other investigators go to the peoples homes and recover the merchandise and arrest the person.. That to me is being a pretty dumb criminal...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_theft

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR1OUFmGq0E

Facebook

When my friends and I graduated high school, and entered our next journey in our lives (college) we didn't know if we would all stay in touch and remain friends. Some of us went to college throughout NY State others went our of state down south, others towards the west, others even left the country entirely. We promised we would all stay in touch, but could we really keep that promise?! With the invention of FaceBook, we could, and we have.

Facebook is a social networking website that is powered by facebook Inc. All a person needs to sign up for Facebook is an email address. Once you sign up for Facebook, you create your profile and include your likes, favorite movies, interests, etc. Once you've done that you need to find some of your friends and have them add to your list. Through Facebook people are allowed to search for past co-workers, friends, class mates, even family. Once a person finds the person they send them a friend request. After the friend request is accepted both people can read the others profile. They are allowed to send private messages to eachother as well as public messages on ones "wall". Also on Facebook people can provide there status update, in which you can let your friends know what your doing at that current time. I'm sure almost everyone at UB has Facebook so Im going to take a break from this and focus more on the history of Facebook.

Facebook was founded in 2004 by computer science students Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, at Harvard University. When it was first created, they limited the membership only to there fellow students at their campus. Next they expanded it to other college students in the Boston area (ex. Stanford). Next limited to only college students, then they included high school students, and finally ANYONE who is 13 years of age and older. Currently there is over 300 million members. However Facebook has also been blocked in some countries including China, Syra and Iran.

Facebook also allows users to create groups and join other groups that coincide with their interest. You can join political, sports, music, or other interest groups. You join the group and talk to other fans about the particular group. Also through Facebook if you are throwing a party you can send invitations to your friends through Facebook.

Facebook is a free to individuals who sign up which begs the question, how do the founders of Facebook make money!? They use the banners ads that you see throughout the website. Microsoft is Facebook's exclusive partner.

This past year facebook has launched a Facebook lite version that allows users to update there status, as well as look at friends status's using there blackberry, ipod touch, iphone, and other PDA"s....

One major problem with Facebook has been there outages. In 2007 an outage resulted in hackers allowing to get on to the site and reading other peoples mail and other personal information.

Facebook is now the most popular social networking site, and should remain at the top for a while now. They have run Myspace, out of the competition and should be able to do that to anyone else that tries to compete with them.

I'm very thankful for the creation of Facebook, because with it I am able to communicate with my friends from other colleges, throughout the world as well as know what they are doing that day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook

www.facebook.com

COM 125 Assignment 3:Social Presence Theory

Social Presence Theory was developed by John Short, Edery Williams, and Bruce Christie. It as one of the first communication media theory, and its been a driving force in influencing computer mediated communication. The development of the theory came about in finding differences between face to face and telephone media communication. “According to social presence theory communication is effective if the medium has the appropriate social presence required for the level of interpersonal involvement required for a task.” If you were to grade the amount of social presence on a scale between different mediums, face to face communication would be at the top while written communication would be at the bottom. The ultimate goal of social presence theory is keeping with ones roles while maintaining a relationship.


I strongly believe everyone has many different interpersonal relationships online, especially college students! In order to keep in touch with family and friends that may be at a different school you need to use the different networks on the internet whether it is by using something like facebook, myspace, aim, etc.

I however have a program on my computer that dell offered with my laptop that lets me communicate via web cam and microphone that lets me have more personal relationships with friends and family then just typing emails or instant messages. When I was a freshman at UB my uncle, aunt and cousins had moved to China, where my uncle took a new job. I am very close with them and it was often difficult to keep in contact with them through the phone, mainly because of how expensive is, and the time difference. Therefore we set up something where we would send videos to one another just to say Hi, and what’s new with the family. I didn’t even know you could do something like this until my parents had shown me how…. As I went on through school I started to do this more with other family members and some friends at different schools. It is a much more personal way to communicate than just typing messages to one another, something we had done prior.

It allowed us to cope a lot more with the distance and the fact that we didn’t see each other as much.

http://en.wikipedia.org/social_presence _theory

COM 125 Assignment 1 Email

The invention of the Internet was something that has changed the history of our society. The Internet is not only a way for you to get your sports scores, your weather, or your current events. It is also a communication gatekeeper, that helps individuals connect with friends, family, co workers, or even complete strangers. Email is a huge reason why people are able to communicate with anyone all over the world with a simple click of the mouse....

E-mail or Electronic mail was first used even before the Internet was invented. In fact before the Internet email was used as a file directory. The message would be stored on the computer so the next time the person logged on they would see the message.. (Like leaving a note on a co-workers desk). The first type of this file directory was Mailbox which was used at MIT in the 1960's.

Without the Internet the only people that you could send messages to were people who were also using the same computer. Therefore, it was rarely used.In 1972 Ray Tomlinson was the man given credit for creating email. In his efforts of creating email, Tom knew he needed a way to create a virtual postal system so the mail could flow to the correct recipient. He understood for this to work each individual using the Internet would need there own address. Tom decided to use the @ symbol to denote a message being sent from one user to another. (name-of-user@name-of -computer) (Wiki)Email is the most popular function of the Internet and is used by 600 million people worldwide.

Everyone remembers when Internet was first developed there was no broadband connection. Every time a person went onto the Internet they would have to use a dial-up connection and it would go straight to a persons phone bill. Therefore people shied away from using email, because they didn't want to pay to read or write there own mail. That is until the invention of offline readers. This program allowed a person to sign on to the Internet and save all of there email to there computers hard drive, and therefore read it later. It also let you compose a message and save it for the next time you went on the Internet. This kept peoples phone bills down and peoples email attraction up.

As email began to get more popular the Post Office Protocol or POP was created. It allowed people to create mail systems that would work with anyone.

A huge flaw of email is the idea of forgery. Anyone can sign up and create an email address. They can pretend to be anyone and their is really no way of knowing if the person is who they claim to be. There has been suggestions of a more difficult way to subscribe to an email address to prevent this forgery but that is something that will probably never happen.

They're so many email providers to use for example google, yahoo, hotmail, aol, etc. And each site has there own unique options that enhance the subscribers experience. If one thing is certain, email will be around for a very long time and without it our Internet experience would be a lot different.

All About me.....

Ok So My name is Ryan.... I am a senior Com Major (Psychology Minor) I am 22 years old!! Havent fully decided what I want to do when I get out of school...(Awful right?!?!) I've always wanted to go into a field related to law enforcement but I think I majored in the wrong thing.

I'm from Rochester New York in the town of Fairport... I played football and basketball in high school and loved it!!

I'm a huge Bills fan!! It's pretty depressing.... I have season tickets (4th year in a row!!)

The main reason why I am taking this class was to fulfill the major requirement but I think it will be a fun class, and hopefully I'll learn a lot....

I really dont have much more to say about myself

Thanks for Reading!!