Inexperienced Users

Topic 3:  Inexperienced Internet Users

Yes, inexperienced internet users are more susceptible to identity theft because there are not as well-informed.   In a research paper about identity theft and retired seniors. Sylvester (2004) examined the likelihood of retirees becoming victims of identity theft and phishing scams.  She inferred that seniors are frequently sought after at a greater degree because they are expected to be more prone to internet cons as well as more believing.  Moreover, it is presumed that seniors have resources to take. Another target group is young social media users. A lot of younger social media have a tendency to give out more info about themselves on social media such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. Govani and Pashley (2005) revealed that younger social media users were more opt to give out personal information such as date of births, telephone numbers, and home locations.

Without proper security procedures, an inexperienced user can fall victim to an attack. Some attacks are inert, meaning information is observed; others are operative, meaning the information is changed with intention to contaminate or damage the info or the network. Inexperienced users are susceptible vulnerable to any of the following types of attacks if one does not have security controls in use (Microsoft, 2014):

1. Eavesdropping - In general, the majority of network communications occur in an unsecured or "cleartext" format, which allows an attacker who has gained access to data paths in your network to "listen in" or interpret (read) the traffic. When an attacker is eavesdropping, it is referred to as sniffing or snooping. The ability of an eavesdropper to monitor the network is generally the biggest security problem that administrators face in an enterprise. Without strong encryption services that are based on cryptography, data can be read by others as it traverses the network.

2. Data Modification - After an attacker has read the data, the next...