National Cyber Security Awareness Month 2019 Part 3: Netiquette
Welcome to my October 2019 refresher series in honor of this year’s National Cyber Security Awareness Month. Last year’s five-part series went over well, so I wanted to revisit what I see as the three most commonly overlooked aspects of cybersecurity from the home and end-user perspectives;
Passwords, how we come up with them and how we store them
Updates, when to check for them and how to apply them
Netiquette, what to do, and what not to do on the open Internet
This week, I’d like to focus on Netiquette. The word itself is a portmanteau of the net from Internet, and etiquette, defined by the Oxford Dictionary as; a customary code of polite behavior in society or among members of a particular profession or group. The concept of a netiquette tells us at face value that there’s proper and improper ways to behave on the Internet. More so now than ever before, codes of conduct are popping up all over the web, thanks primarily to social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. The concept of an overarching single style of etiquette is not new, so I’ll go over what netiquette was like when it first came to be, and where we’ve gone since.
Netiquette as also defined by the Oxford Dictionary is; “the correct or acceptable way of communicating on the Internet.” Wikipedia’s entry for the subject of etiquette in technology juxtaposes the fact that netiquette is intentionally different from in-person, audio, and even video conversations. When searching for the term, there’s no shortage of sites to explain their Top-5 and Top-10 rules for online etiquette. In books going back to the early 1990’s, netiquette was something reserved for people who, first, even knew what the Internet was back then, then second, had a personal computer or workstation at the office to be able to access the web. Netiquette was the stuff of geeks, nerds, and the occasional white-hat hacker.
Etiquette was born out of the necessity to digitally deal with the various existing styles of human communication, but none more so than writing emails instead of writing letters. Additional novelties appeared as the Internet increased exponentially in popularity, such as forums and group chat websites. As more communication that used to happen in person started happening online, traditional rules of in-person etiquette kept creeping into netiquette. To that point, one of the first rules in Virginia Shea’s book Netiquette, just after “Remember the Human,” is “Adhere to the same standards of behavior online that you follow in real life.” The full list from her book is:
Rule 1: Remember the Human
Rule 2: Adhere to the same standards of behavior online that you follow in real life
Rule 3: Know where you are in cyberspace
Rule 4: Respect other people's time and bandwidth
Rule 5: Make yourself look good online
Rule 6: Share expert knowledge
Rule 7: Help keep flame wars under control
Rule 8: Respect other people's privacy
Rule 9: Don't abuse your power
Rule 10: Be forgiving of other people's mistakes
Reader may notice some of the rules are specific enough to be self-explanatory. In the remaining eight-of-ten rules, however, I’d like to focus on the one that I feel really seems to keep people safe in today’s online environments; Rule 3: Know where you are in cyberspace. Users are encouraged to get to know what website they’re on, or what the chatroom is like, before jumping in to participate in discussions. Taking this a step further, users should always be aware of the address in the browser before interacting with a given website. There are websites out there pretending to be real websites and just waiting to steal credit card or personal information.
Users must know where they are, so they know when to speak-up, and with what information. Afterall, no one, in their right mind, would log in to Facebook and proceed to post their credit or debit card numbers for all to see. More advanced Internet users take for granted that people know not to do this. As with any system of rules or regulations, some rules of netiquette are more obvious than others. Full explanations of the ten rules, if anyone would like more information, can be found in the free online version of Virginia Shea’s book, Netiquette, available here… http://www.albion.com/netiquette/book/index.html
