A terrifying October night taught essence of digital security

Living in an era where technology governs both our professional and personal spheres, our reliance on digital platforms has become integral. From managing finances, work tasks, and education, to maintaining relationships, the digital realm plays a significant role in our lives.

Yet, amidst the convenience, the internet and digital networks harbour risks for those unaware of their appropriate use. This is where Digital Citizenship comes into play—advocating for responsible behaviour in navigating internet technologies. It encompasses the effective utilization of technology, online safety, rights, norms, ethical understanding, and digital literacy.

The swift communication and access to vast data repositories via digital means have immense potential, contingent on responsible handling. To foster a healthy global environment, a thorough understanding of Digital Citizenship is paramount. This confident engagement with digital technology stands to revolutionize our world, aiding individuals in achieving myriad goals such as online security, digital health, cybersecurity, digital etiquette, well-being, and responsibility.

Among the facets of Digital Citizenship, digital security holds pivotal importance. It encompasses safeguarding one's online identity, data, and assets—an aspect that, if compromised, can lead to disastrous consequences, even impacting mental health.

Cybercriminals capitalize on the allure of valuable data and exploit vulnerabilities, often through phishing attacks or malware. Our susceptibility to such threats lies within ourselves, as our actions can inadvertently aid cybercriminals. This vulnerability is exemplified in my own experience:

Needing Adobe Premiere Pro for a YouTube project, I sought a free version online, a decision that led to a nightmarish ordeal.

I had to install Adobe Premiere Pro so that I could edit videos for my new YouTube project. Premiere being one of Adobe's pay-to-use software would cost me about 20 dollars per month, which at that time was far beyond my affordability. I likewise decided to adopt it since most individuals seek out cracks of this paid software and for such cracks or pre-activated versions, I, typically, used to depend on Torrent. But here was another issue, my PC was a bit less compatible with the newest version of the premiere and on TorrentBD the latest version was only available. And here is where the most stressful day of my life started.

I looked on Google using the keywords "download premiere pro-2016 version free" and quite expectedly I got a lot of sites that provided but most of them were extremely unknown to me, and even appeared unauthentic But me being so eager to get Premiere Pro on my PC, I chose to download from one of these sites. The zip or rar file downloaded and I suppose, many of you know there is a pre-requirement to install any pre-activated or cracked software on your computer, you must deactivate your Windows defenders or any antivirus you have on your PC. And so I took off my Windows Defender before installing the crack. Finally, I hit the install button, and the program was installed. I ran it, and it was a complete version. I was relieved. I switched on my window protectors and here I began to witness something terrible.

Notifications were one after another, every notification was used to state possibly harmful applications detected. One after another alarm was flowing in. Suddenly I began to notice the command panel opening automatically. I switched off the computer right there, rushed to my friend's house to borrow his windows, burnt the Pen drive, and installed the whole window from scratch.

But all my damage had already transpired by that time which I didn't even realize. I had all my passwords saved in my Chrome browser, passwords of my bank account, my Facebook, my every email, and that YouTube channel as well. My whole digital identity was there. At midnight that day, I began to receive alerts from my Facebook, my Gmail, and my other accounts that either someone tried to log in from a location in Alaska, the US or someone had logged in. There began the complete horror; suddenly I realized my whole digital existence had been invaded for that one error.

During that hack and attempt, what could preserve most of my personal data is the two-factor authentication, which would need a code to log in to my account fully that is delivered to my phone number. Nevertheless, my loss was done for that time, many of my passwords and their patterns were exposed. I had to carefully go through each and every single account I had throughout my lifetime and reset all of those passwords. It was my good luck that I didn’t have something private to exhort me with or to make my life hell. However, what a terrifying day I had, I wish that entire day was a nightmare.

Even the biggest of celebrities are not protected, for example, we have seen Mark Zuckerberg the inventor of Facebook was hacked because he used the same password for his social networks. We have very lately witnessed intimate photos being outspread of famous Director Iftekhar Ahmed Fahmi and Actress Rafiath Rashid Mithila due to security breaches or inadequate understanding of Digital Citizenship. Every year, every month, and even daily, hundreds of images and videos are being outspread or the victims are being extorted.

What is obvious is that nobody is completely secure and that in terms of cybersecurity, every small precaution is important. To live in peace with a healthy environment, we all need to hold the core of Digital Citizenship.