Life Between 0 and 1

My career has been built on the technology that is controlling and running everything. It’s ironic that the technology that has created a career is the same technology that I now don’t trust and hate using outside of work hours. I already don’t carry my cell phone most weekends and, if I do, it’s on silent and used only for music while driving in the car. My awareness of the control and damage a cell device can cause is the highest it has ever been. I have a teenage daughter that is unfortunately making very poor decisions in her use of the cell phone that is on my family service plan. I won’t go into detail as it’s not relevant, however her choices have come down to two options: use a flip phone or get on your own plan. As she isn’t at the age of majority yet, the only choice is a flip phone.

I’m in the information security and risk compliance field, have been for over 15 years and man have I seen things people try to get away with. I recall this one guy using a folder he thought was cleverly named and protected with a password only to be scanned at the device level to reveal a trove of pictures. None of these pictures were… work related… and he was summarily reported. I think he tried to say it was an invasion of his privacy or something to be told that it was a corporate drive, and he had no expectation of privacy. Those were early days and systems weren’t so mobile back then. Now you carry a literal computer in your pocket that is extremely vulnerable despite taking many precautions. I see people using their phones to tap and go at the store and I just shake my head. We can barely protect physical cards from breach let alone a device that can be stolen and hooked to a cracking program.

Back to my daughter, she has not provided me an answer yet to my question on what she wants to do. I already have the flip phone charged and ready to receive a sim card. I think her words were “I won’t use that because it’s literally social suicide” but, with all her social apps having already been blocked, she’s not missing anything regardless. At this point, because of previous “choices” with her cell phone, all social media apps have been blocked. That might seem harsh to those that trust what their children are doing, but honestly how often do you look at their phone or have software watching what they do? If you have only one or none, your children are doing things and accessing things they probably shouldn’t be accessing. What goes on the Internet stays on the Internet, never goes away. If the content has value to less than savory types of people, the content sometimes goes to the dark web and gets shared. Try getting a job in 10 years when there is potentially a picture of you in a compromising position searchable on the Internet.

Google search your name in quotes, I think you’ll be surprised what is listed on the first page.

My daughter thankfully hasn’t done anything with the wrong person, so there isn’t any permanent damage, but it’s just a matter of time if she doesn’t start making better choices. Believe me, it’s not for lack of trying or explaining on my part.

I’m rejecting technology more and more each day….