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tech is such a walled garden now I can easily see younger gens falling for some of the pretty insidious social engineering going on.
I also think a lot of net safety teaching has been diluted over the years as it turns out people knowing stuff like that makes it harder for corporations to make money off of you and track you.
hell I have almost fallen for some of the shit that goes on these days. It literally takes a single second where you have a lapse of judgement for them to get you.
IDK i just think we should be going "okay but WHY does this advice have to keep coming up every few months despite how basic it seems on paper?" instead of "Does anyone not already know this?"
we're also, like,
acting like we DIDN'T all download shady as hell stuff from Limewire and by googling VIDEOGAME FOR FREE GOOGLE?
One other aspect of this that I think some folks fail to appreciate is that all of our warning systems have been defanged and/or people are numb to them.
These days, not having purchased the right license to get digital signatures for an indie game means that Windows Defender and/or most Antivirus software are going to label your program as malware. Which in turn means that every single thing you download off itch lately has a big warning of "THIS IS NOT MALWARE. IT'S A FALSE POSITIVE. IGNORE AND INSTALL".
In turn, that means that most people are just going to ignore anything that might jump in and tell them "Hey, wait, this is a bad idea". That game your friend just linked you to on Discord is throwing warnings? That's nothing new, right?
Honestly, one of the things that also makes my skin craw is the eagerness with which people just seem to agree to allow complete account access online. You want to see funny UI elements on Twitch? Click this button that agrees to allow our extension to take over every aspect of your account and you'll get it! Every extension needs this - so you, again, get numb to it.
People aren't dumb - It's just incredibly hard to tell real threats from safe actions in some areas of online life (And that gets even more complicated when you think about the fact that a previous safe extension or program can get hijacked or hit by a supply chain attack - It was safe, now it's not. Not a situation a lot of folks want or need to worry about).
Education on these matters is important!
lemma 1: relying on authority is notably NOT power
(proofs left as an exercise to the reader)
