CyberTort

Recently, I got a text message from my mom, asking me what my email address is. She also asked for my brother’s email address. So I just gave it without suspecting anything fishy happening. Later, she asked for our PASSWORDS. And so, I asked her why she needed our passwords. She said that her student (because she’s a professor) wants to add us on facebook. So I patiently told her that her student does not need to know our passwords to add us on facebook, she only needs to know our email addresses. But my mom said that her student was asking for it. Unfortunately, my mother remembered that I have “universal passwords” for my email, laptop, webmail account, and just any other account that would require a password. So she told her student to try the different permutations. For example, if my password is frostbite, she told her student that if it won’t work, she should try “bitefrost” or “kagatfrost” or “frostkagat”, etc.

Without any sarcasm, I could say that my mom is definitely not nosy. I mean, we are open enough to each other that she doesn’t need to open my email or facebook account to pry into my whereabouts. Hence, I could definitely conclude that it was her student who wants my password.

I do not know exactly why her student wants to access my account. I don’t know her at all. Perhaps it was out of sheer curiosity, or boredom, or maybe she was just extremely nosy, or in tagalog, “pakialamera”. Or maybe she was an identity thief, or a hacker, or an internet scammer? Whatever her reasons were, that girl really pissed me off. The email address my mother disclosed was the one I use for everything which needs an email address since I was in high school: for friendster, facebook, jobstreet, for school work, etc.

My mom is in her mid-fifties and knows little about the internet. She knows how to use the computer: she can play games like Text-Twist, she can type using Microsoft Word, and she can even chat with my father using Yahoo Messenger. But she is surprisingly unaware that people should not just give away their email passwords to anybody who asks for it. So I tried my best to explain to her what could possibly happen because of what she did. I told her about identity theft, hacking, and the like.

Surely there are other people in their mid-fifties, or older or even younger, who take for granted Cyber Privacy and Identity. They are unaware that one’s email address in itself is a valuable piece of information. What more if the email address comes with a password!

Minding one’s own business is one basic common courtesy which each person should observe whether in the real world or in the cyberworld. In the real world we have Tort Law so, perhaps the Philippines should have an Anti-Cybertort Law where CYBERNOSINESS could be a CYBERTORT.

Beyond legal and security issues, I think cyber privacy and identity boils down to one fundamental concept: RESPECT.

-Gen S. (1)