Tech Forays

I remember the chilling experience of entering the dark net during my college years. While I was already familiar with the content of the World Wide Web at a young age (having created accounts just for the sake of having one on social media platforms en vogue during the late 2000’s – Multiply, Friendster, MySpace, etc), reading cyber espionage novels piqued my interest. I did my research, got in through an anonymous browser and got links from 4chan, I was able to enter various anonymous portals. What I’ve seen was the definition of expected but still surprising. After a few months of frequent visits, I got a notification that my email was being hacked. Through the IP provided by Google (thank the heavens for the adequate protection), I was able to triangulate the location of the IP address of the would-be hacker using Google Maps and it directed me to an empty lot somewhere in the United States. It was then that I finally ended trying to enter the dark net, and promptly deleted all of my email accounts.

The Web Iceberg. Image from WHSR

Fast forward to the recent years, many of my email accounts have been subjected to various data breaches of the recent years (especially the headlined data breach of Yahoo! during the late 2010’s) and it has solidified my experience of being careful in the Internet. Now that I’m working in the financial sector, the recent digital rise in the Philippine have also exposed many online users to the same data breaches which lead to compromised bank accounts and personal information such as email addresses and contact numbers which have been used in the recent phishing scams that have plagued the country, and many account holders lost money from these cybercrimes.

With all of these, let us stay vigilant.