Social Impacts of IT

1. Social Impacts of IT • This developments in IT have affected the world around us, making businesses expand, becoming an excellent learning source, social virtual community… etc. The IT in general made simple ordinary things way more easy to do; but all this facilities comes with positive effects and negatives to our society. • One of the main groups that are affected by the IT are the: • Local Community • Availability of jobs • Inequality in Broadband Access • Potential risks & threats Godfred O. Sekyere

2. Local Community • The massive step that the technology has done for the “global community” is great. Now everybody can make use of IT for everything, making simple and complicated task more easy to do, But this technologies have affected the Local Community, changing the people lifestyles and way to operate. • Some of the changes that the IT has done to the community are: • Social communication • Lifestyles • Businesses & market • The IT and the Internet is becoming an essential source in our life; now days people prefer more communicating with people thru the network, creating a “community network” ,where everybody is sitting in their homes chatting thru the keyboard of their devices, leading this type of community to change most of the people lifestyle and how the businesses and the market work right now. • The people in the locals community right now, according to “commerce times”, 85 %of net surfers shop online and the reasons are the ability to shop during off-hours, saving time, avoiding trips to the store, better prices, shopping without salesperson pressure and easier comparison shopping; all positive points for the online shoppers; but all negative for the local businesses and markets, where they usually loose a big number of costumers, leading them to fire most of the people occupying the staff sector and occasionally forced to shut down the businesses in fear of big extra debts to pay. • Now, because of the of the massive use of the Internet, different businesses and markets are selling their buildings and places, to move the market online, by creating websites and promoting them and their products thru the internet (Community networks, Search Engines, e-mails … etc.), also creating a “virtual market place” where businesses are able sell their products and even able to choose a right partners to empower the business; simplifying the traditional letter post and telephone calls in a speed of a mouse click. Godfred O. Sekyere

3. Availability of jobs • Robots are proving day by day to be like and even smarter than humans. Like humans they also make mistakes, but they don't get bored • Robots now days are present in every sector of our society like: Science, Business, Legal Lawyers, , Army… etc. • Company and businesses are one of the main organizations that are more looking thru the technology, by making use of automated computers a special machines to increasingly sell more products with fewer employees. This great idea can lead businesses to grow faster and expand worldwide, but all this technology with pros, it also have a lot of cons too. • Some of the big disadvantages in making use of technology are: • Brake down or meltdown. • Very expensive. • Massive quantity equal to more defects. • Less jobs for people. • Society and Government Issues. • No back up solutions • One of the biggest problem that companies and businesses are occasionally facing, is when the main automated machines that is producing brake down, meltdown or even accidentally produce large amount of defected products. This big issues can make this organizations loose large quantity of money in repairing the equipment and also loose another large amount of money because of the high demand of the products, leading sometimes to risk the shut down of the business. • Another big issues about the people working for this companies is that they can risk to loose their jobs and be replaced with the automated machines, able to produce large amounts of products. A big advantage for the business but also a big disadvantage for the society and the government, that is facing a though time by cutting the benefits and other facilities , all this because of the simple tax paid by the worker. Godfred O. Sekyere

4. Inequality in broadband access • The IT is seen as a vital tool in improving education and healthcare system in the whole country; but this can change from place to place and from people to people • Some of the inequality and disadvantage are: • Absence of Broadband connection in rural places • Affordability in Broadband connection • Lack of IT knowledge • The internet was originally designed for sending text but now web pages contain a lot more than just text; there are: graphics, animations, photographs, sound clips and videos; like a water pipe the a slow “communication channel” cannot carry large amount of information, making the system slow and pretty though to work with. • In many developed places of the country, people have access to fast broadband, but this changes when we talking about rural places and less developed places in the English country. • The IT and Internet access are really rare to detect in this places; places that where a little percentage of the territory is covered by a slow and old connection to the internet and this lead the majority of the businesses to forget to expand or move their businesses in this places; • Another big issue that this type of places have is the “Affordability in Broadband connection”; normally this places are very remote and very hard to reach, that when companies have to spend more than the normal cost to install internet connections in the territory, this can lead to expensive broadband and line rentals bills; and without businesses and companies this territories are not able to develop and this is proven by the fact that the majority of the people living in this places are not able to use IT technologies. Godfred O. Sekyere

5. Risks & Threats of the IT • The IT as I said before is becoming an essential source in our life making it way easier; but in the other side it can be a very dangerous place for us • Some of the main threats that are present in the internet and IT are: • Cyber bullying • Spam • Phishing • Denial Service Godfred O. Sekyere

6. Cyber Bullying • The Internet can be a very dangerous and threatening place, especially for the youth; where they can be exposed and abused from bullies and also get into serious situation with total strangers. • Cyber bullying, a new version of the classic and most known sort of bullying used to take place in school has moved on to the Internet and especially thru mobile devices, where people can be threaten in different ways like: • Being texted with scary or rude messages by mobile phone. • Being sent unpleasant photographs by mobile phone. • Online message boards, chat rooms or social networking sites created, opened and used to post cruel messages to and about the victims. • Cyber bullying is different and difficult to deal with from any other forms of bullying; research from different schools are saying that cyber bullying is very common and more present between teenagers, that most of the situation are bullied from people that are able to hide using the Internet. This form of bullying is very powerful and very destructive where victims of any age are vulnerable, exposed and virtually followed at home or even to their bedrooms, leading this victims to stress, depression and sometimes worsts case like death. • To prevent all this consequences to you child or to people that are being bulled thru the network, there are some approaches that you may consider: • Be aware of what cyber bullying is. • Keep all your passwords and security questions safe. • “Flag” or show all nasty messages to the network security or to any people that may take serious actions. • Do not reply to any inappropriate or flagged messages sent to you. • Talk to staff or superior about other people being involved. Godfred O. Sekyere

7. Spam • Spam is a common issue that is facing the internet for many years. A spam in few words can be describe as the well known mass emails often sent out by companies trying to sell and advertise their products; e-mails are sent to people who have not requested the information and where most of the time this mails are filtered, situated and deleted by junk mail. • Most people, however, see spam as the persistent problem of e-mail and look for ways to stop it from ruining e-mail boxesand slowing down internet connections. • To prevent spams to be sent to your email account and mix with your important and needed email, is by: • Not giving out your email address. • use your e-mail application's filtering features. • report the e-mailer to the spammer's ISP (Internet Service Provider). • The first step to prevent spam to be sent to your email box is by not giving out your email address to no one, even though now days is pretty though to operate in different sites without giving your email address, where spammers can expand, make use of it or sell your details(email address) to other spammers to use. • Another way to save your email boxes is by open different email address for each purposes like(business, family, shopping…etc.) and make use of email filter that this emails host are offering; specific filter that by making use of particular integrated software are able to detect spam by repetitive word patterns, grouping and deleting all this “unexpected emails” in a sector in you email account called “Junk mails”. • Finally an alternative and more aggressive method to be safe from spams is thru reporting the “e-mailer” to the spammer's ISP (Internet Service Provider), where once discovered spam’s origin, this spammers are ordered to not make use of their services and even ban the offending “parties” from using their services. Godfred O. Sekyere

8. Phishing • Phishing is another big issue that is present on the internet. Phishing consist in sending an e-mail to another person faking and claiming to be a legitimate, real business in purpose to scam and steal private information(Bank details, passwords, emails…etc.) that will be used by the thief. • In most of the case this e-mails received, would ask the victim to visit different “Bogus” fake, set up web sites where they are ask to fill some pages with very important and private information like passwords, credit card, social security and bank account numbers, that the “legitimate” real business already has. • For example, a large number of users receive a phishing scam where was supposedly from Barclays claiming that the users accounts were need be updated for some number of reasons, but this operation were not possible unless the users clicked on the provided link, and filled the credit/debit card information, that the genuine Barclays already had, into fake sites created by trying to copy the HTML code of the original and legitimate one, making way to the phisher to take posses of the information given. • Phishing like “fishing”, is referring the idea to thrown out a net with the hopes that somebody will get caught in it. To avoid identify a phishing message and avoid email fraud you have to: • treat phishing emailsas spam and delete the email immediately without opening. • Do not reply to the email, and do not click on any links in the email, or open any files attached to them. • Spam emails are methods for distributing viruses; If you have clicked the link on the email, make a full security scan of your computer. • If you have responded to any email and gave out your private information and have lost money, please contact your bank and the local police immediately. Godfred O. Sekyere

9. Denial Service Attack • In the internet network a denial service attack is a critical issue that can be very problematic. A denial service attack is when a “server” is attacked with the purpose to "flood", crash or end the service. • Specific systems are able to create a denial service attack by Bombarding a web server with so many requests that the server can’t cope and has to shut down; Intruders usually make way into various networks launching effective denial of service attacks by alternating configurations or sending a massive large of “request packets” slowing down and sometimes even crash the server, making certain sites getting thru though times and most of the time make businesses based on the network, loose large amounts of money. • Denial service attack can be very dangerous for the network, but is also able to compromise the integrity of other devices; these include: • Printers • Network Connections • Device using Internet Connections • This particular type of attack can be very can result in significant loss of time and money for many organizations and businesses, making them very hard to be connected with customers or stay connective with the rest of the world. • To prevent this issue to slow down your businesses and stay connective you must consider this following options: • Observe and maintain your system performance. • Disable any unused or unneeded network services. • Create and maintain regular backup for important configuration information's. Godfred O. Sekyere