Vulnerability of Information Technology

Information Technology (IT) is playing great role in Web and internet development. Information Technology works beyond the borders of countries and cultures that is why; it made the world as a global village. With Web 2.0 and 3.0, we can share information but usually people share the things without authenticating. Such sharing indirectly spreads wrong knowledge to people. So such vulnerability in Information Technology is very dangerous for the community.

Here I am mentioning few examples of Information Technology vulnerability:

There is email forwards flooding around which claims that UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) has chosen the Indian National Anthem (Jana Gana Mana) as the best national anthem in the world. I confirmed this from various sources, like website of UNESCO and various news channel's website that, no such declaration made by UNESCO or any other organisation.

On Facebook, I came across two photographs of Gandhiji. In first photograph, Nathuram Godase is standing in front of Gandhiji before assassination and in second photograph, Gandhiji is dancing with a white lady. Both photographs looks like a genuine but thanks to Satrajit Choudhury who cleared that both photographs are not original. The detail explanatory analysis is given on Satrajit's post.

On social networking sites, most of people shares picture of small boy/girl mentioning that, this child has cancer and if you share this photograph then Facebook/Orkut are agreed to pay $1 to his parents for further treatment. Such claims are fake claims; no one pays for such sharing on social sites.

I am fed of emails saying that, this email came from ..... God, send this email to 10 people, if you ignore this email, you will get bad news, and if you send this email to 10 people then you will get good news. How can people believe such emails and keep sending to others?

Also, I got the email-picture stating that, Wikileaks released names of Indian people whose black money is in Swiss bank. I confirmed from Wikileaks's twitter page that, Wikileaks haven't published any such list.

There are many more examples of hoax news and fake photographs on Web like five headed snake, three headed snake, fake photograph of Osama Bin Laden, etc etc....

I came across three websites to confirm the news is fake or not.

You can search the news on Hoax-slayer.com and Urbanlegends.about.com to test the news is hoax or not. These websites analyse the news and publishes its detailed report regarding it. You can subscribe the email newsletters of the website in free of cost.

Also, you can visit the Discovery Channel's mythbusters section at http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/mythbusters/ to find out the results of myths. Here you can see the myth buster videos.

As we are becoming more and more digital, people are violating more and more copyright rules. Plagiarism is one of the big problem. People don’t understand the difference between copying and sharing. They thinks that everything on Web is free or freely distributable. That is why; I support SOPA and PIPA bills of US government.

No doubt, Information Technology has number of merits but we cannot and should not ignore "some" vulnerable things. Keep sharing with naked eyes.