August 6, 2009

While it has been many hours since Twitter was attached, it poses a whole new set of questions concerning online security and threats to confidential information. Yesterday, people just could not access Twitter and it went blank, while many people in different parts of the world could no longer tweet. Facebook also faced a similar denial of service threat. Along with this, we must remember that PayPal was down for an hour or so a few days ago.

With our lives depending on these social networking and online money transfers, the confidential information which we place on these sites could be grossly compromised. It calls for a new level of security measures and hacking being treated as a grievous crime. Hacking is known to be held in high regard by “ethical hackers” whose ethics and sense of morality can be seriously questioned.

Hacking, good or bad must be criminalized, and web service companies must invest more in technologies that make their sites more secure and efficient. Twitter is known to not have the kind of infrastructure to support the vast number of visitors it entertains each second. It calls for regularization of online services and boosting technology and security in order to keep the hackers away