Jasmine Ho
Mr. Hayes
English 1A17
23rd
January 2013
Word Count: 520
Article chosen: Social Networks Are Vulnerable to Crime by Gordon M. Snow
Social networking websites are
proliferating in recent years. Living in
a “technology-based” era, with the trend of using smart phones, almost everyone
has an account for these websites, for instance, Facebook, Twitter, or
Instagram. The younger generations
are addicted with these sites; they tend to share every bits of life through
these platforms. Meanwhile,
criminologists point out that these networks provide cyber criminals more opportunities.
In Social
Networks Are Vulnerable to Crime written by Gordon
M. Snow, an assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), he
stated out how fraudsters make use of different channels to exploit Internet
users.
Gordon first listed out several platforms which cyber criminals take advantage of in order to deceive the users of different networks, including social engineering, fraud scheme, phishing scams, data mining, and cyber underground. For each of the above-mentioned platforms, he explained in detail what exactly it is, and what techniques the criminals use to get the users’ personal information and passwords. By reading Gordon’s brief introductions, readers are able to have a big and clear picture of the specific terms that mentioned by him throughout the passage.
Take data mining as an example. From the paragraph, readers are able to get a rough idea about it, criminals send out “get to know yourself” quizzes to a large group of users of a social networking site, which the questions are the same as those asked by financial institutions or e-mail account providers when an individual has forgotten their password. In this case, criminals automatically get the “tool” to enter people’s personal account, for example, bank account, and email account.
Gordon then proceeds to the next big part of explaining how FBI deals with the increasing number of cyber crimes by collaborating with different federal law enforcement agencies, for some of them, further examples are given. For example, he introduced that thousands of cyber squads were set in their state offices around the country to help combating the increasing number of cyber criminals nowadays.
After that, the writer jumped to the conclusion that FBI and its partner have made significant strides in combating cyber crime, though there is more work to be done, through a coordinated approach, egregious offenders could be subjected to justice.
Overall, the writer used simple vocabularies, sufficient and related examples to demonstrate his ideas and opinions, which make the passage very easy to read and understand, even to those who have not much knowledge in cyber criminals. However, this passage is very expository, full of facts and information, but lack of relevant arguments raised related to the topic. The writer’s style of writing did not make the passage argumentative at all, which disabled readers to have an all-round angle towards the issue. Since Mr. Gordon did not raise any arguments, readers are not able to criticize the points of view or supporting reason of the writer. In this case, Readers might feel like acquiring knowledge, rather than being lead to different angles in the discussion of the issue.
Gordon first listed out several platforms which cyber criminals take advantage of in order to deceive the users of different networks, including social engineering, fraud scheme, phishing scams, data mining, and cyber underground. For each of the above-mentioned platforms, he explained in detail what exactly it is, and what techniques the criminals use to get the users’ personal information and passwords. By reading Gordon’s brief introductions, readers are able to have a big and clear picture of the specific terms that mentioned by him throughout the passage.
Take data mining as an example. From the paragraph, readers are able to get a rough idea about it, criminals send out “get to know yourself” quizzes to a large group of users of a social networking site, which the questions are the same as those asked by financial institutions or e-mail account providers when an individual has forgotten their password. In this case, criminals automatically get the “tool” to enter people’s personal account, for example, bank account, and email account.
Gordon then proceeds to the next big part of explaining how FBI deals with the increasing number of cyber crimes by collaborating with different federal law enforcement agencies, for some of them, further examples are given. For example, he introduced that thousands of cyber squads were set in their state offices around the country to help combating the increasing number of cyber criminals nowadays.
After that, the writer jumped to the conclusion that FBI and its partner have made significant strides in combating cyber crime, though there is more work to be done, through a coordinated approach, egregious offenders could be subjected to justice.
Overall, the writer used simple vocabularies, sufficient and related examples to demonstrate his ideas and opinions, which make the passage very easy to read and understand, even to those who have not much knowledge in cyber criminals. However, this passage is very expository, full of facts and information, but lack of relevant arguments raised related to the topic. The writer’s style of writing did not make the passage argumentative at all, which disabled readers to have an all-round angle towards the issue. Since Mr. Gordon did not raise any arguments, readers are not able to criticize the points of view or supporting reason of the writer. In this case, Readers might feel like acquiring knowledge, rather than being lead to different angles in the discussion of the issue.
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