While in the middle of this unit on trolling my friend told me about a huge trolling incident at his college. In the Cal State Long Beach dorms a student was able to hack into the wifi and view all activity of the other people living there. He was able to intercept messages and manipulate them, and enjoyed the smug satisfaction of eavesdropping on conversations. Many students are still unaware that this is happening, but the few that know are trying to find solutions to ensure their safety and privacy. It was easy to see from the way students have began reacting that knowing your activity could have been watched by a cyber stalker is a weird feeling. My friend explained that it made him feel violated, and I’m sure others would agree. Personally, I think it is sad that campuses are not able to pick up on these incidents quicker, and it is frightening how easy it is for even an average college student to recklessly manipulate hundreds of people. I for one am always connecting to different wifi sources without much thought about the security of them, but hearing of what happened at CSULB, I might start thinking twice about the safety of free wifi. I am curious how common it is for things like this to happen, and whether or there are any things you can do to stop them from happening. I know that even with students aware of what is going on, it is hard to find a quick solution, and nearly impossible to even know if you are one of the ones being watched.
-Brooke Sasse
Wow, I can’t even image what I’d do if I found out someone hacked into my WiFi and read all of my messages and personal information. While working on this trolling segment in class, I only ever really thought of the direct trolling, like commenting crazy things on other people’s social media’s. I never thought about the trolls that troll without people even knowing. To me, that’s the scariest and most dangerous type of trolling. The person that hacked into the WiFi can do whatever he wants with all of the information he has now and that shouldn’t be something they’re able to get access too so easily. Hope everything gets handled so your friend has nothing more to worry about.
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