Jillian Dillon is a digital design major at Arkansas State University – Mountain Home. Jillian is originally from Memphis, Tennessee, and is a member of the Beta Iota Epsilon chapter of Phi Theta Kappa and the Fran Coulter Honors Program. She is active on the ASUMH campus and spends her free time helping with campus events and fundraisers. After fully completing her education, Jillian hopes to use her artistic skills to help communicate important information and issues through a career in graphic design.
Do you know what a hacker looks like? Do you know what a hacker does? Whether on television or the internet, in infographics or cartoons, we have all seen what a hacker looks like. Always depicted as a mysterious man in a hood, with his face either shadowed or covered by a mask, the hacker is typing furiously on a laptop as he breaks into your bank account to rob you of your funds. Despite how prominent this portrayal of hackers is, it is hardly accurate. As the digital age has just begun, many are already vulnerable to loss of privacy through cyberattacks, especially seniors and those who did not grow up with technology, and this narrow portrayal of hackers and cybersecurity concepts makes those demographics more vulnerable by perpetuating misinformation about cybersecurity and misrepresentation of hacking.
One issue with this all-too-common portrayal of an evil hacker forcefully breaking into your accounts and stealing your data is simply that this is not what hacking often looks like, just as phishing scams don’t look like spiders bursting forth from a suspicious email to eat away at your information. Rather, as professor Chris Farnell of the University of Arkansas explained to the Honors Arkansas Privacy forum this May through his presentation and the readings he assigned the class, a hacker may be a curious teenager who simply wants to see what they can do. A phishing email may appear to be an innocent notice from a trusted company. A social engineer may look like a kind businessperson with your best interests at heart. This is explained thoroughly in a reading Dr. Farnell assigned to the class from the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency website (2021).
One instance that proves this concept was the recent Uber breach. Uber, a mobile transportation service, suffered a network breach last year, and the hacker gained total control of Uber’s systems. The hacker used this access to spread explicit photos to Uber employees and access data. This hacker was found to be not a cyber supervillain but a curious 18-year-old who wanted to break into Uber’s systems because he knew they had poor security. He gained access by pretending to be an information technology person and receiving a password from an Uber employee who was not as alert and aware as they should have been (Conger & Roose, 2022). As we can see from this example, the media’s neglect to portray hackers and cyberattacks realistically limits people’s understanding of what to look out for to keep themselves safe, especially for those in vulnerable demographics. Using frightening imagery to scare an audience into protecting their privacy may instead cause the audience to not expect danger from something that does not look like the clearly malicious examples they have seen.
With all these concerns regarding the effects of the misrepresentation of hackers and cybersecurity in mind, keeping the data of yourself and others private and safe may seem more difficult than initially anticipated. However, there are many simple actions you can take to protect yourself and encourage loved ones to do the same. First and foremost, it is vital to stay aware and cautious in any situation in which you are asked to provide personal information. Ensure that the website you are visiting is secure and that the URL is familiar and trustworthy. Always think twice before clicking a link you are unfamiliar with. Change your passwords often and enable two-factor authentication when you can. Keep software up-to-date and enable automatic updates where possible (Ready, 2022). Most importantly, remember that scams appear innocent more often than they appear malicious. When it comes to cybersecurity and protecting your privacy, the best thing one can do is be informed and alert.