Safer Internet Day

I don’t know if you are big on social networks, but I have an ASK.fm account, and these guys ask you a random question every single day. This morning, they wanted to know what “good vibes” I have to offer to make the Internet a better place. Well, what would you know: It’s the Safer Internet Day 2016 today, and so various platforms and companies celebrate it in multiple ways.test

Perhaps, when you think of “Safer Internet,” you would image a vast space without malware and other criminal activity. Yet, there’s much more to Safe Internet than just eradicating the criminal side of it. Let’s be honest, getting rid of cyber crooks might be a Sisyphean task, so perhaps all of us should take baby steps into the bright tomorrow. And start with those good vibes. Let me mention just a few of those that brighten up the Internet today.

For example, to mark the Safer Internet Day, Google offers its users an extra 2GB of Drive storage for free if they go through a security checkup. The checkup includes backtracking on your recovery information, connected devises, account permissions, and the 2-Step Verification settings. Perhaps this is something users don’t take seriously, but such deeds on Google’s part shows how important to keep your account information up-to-date, in order to ensure its security.

But it’s not just up to such humongous companies as Google to make the Internet a better place. In fact, this year’s theme of the Safer Internet Day is “Play your part for a better internet!” It means that each and every one of us should think what we could do to make it safer. I have to admit, I deleted the daily question from my ASK.fm account because I thought it was too pretentious, but when you give it a better thought, there really are some small, but important details that would contribute to the idea.

For instance, there is a T.H.I.N.K b4 U Send campaign in Canada that encourages Internet users to refrain from spreading potentially malicious content across the web. And we’re not talking about cyber threats here. The content in question might be anything from sexting (creating and sharing sexual media over the Internet), that is a form of self and peer exploitation, to cyberbullying that was tackled with ferocity by ASK.fm itself. It is, in fact, a lot easier to stop yourself from inflicting damage on the other. All you have to do is ask whether you would like it if anyone did it to you.

That would be it. Refraining from anything illegal, unnecessary, and possibly hurtful. No one is asking for unicorn rainbows and daisies. Just, how about spreading some of those good vibes once in a while?

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