5.5 Legal and Ethical Concerns

In 5.5 we learned about licenses and the use of licenses. We learned about all of the varying types and why they may be used. We talked about when each license should be used and when it shouldn’t. We prioritize open source in this classroom since it allows people to view the code but they can directly make edits to certain parts.

  1. When you create a GitHub repository it requests a license type. Review the license types in relationship to this Tech Talk and make some notes in your personal blog. In this Tech Talk, the different license types are Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal, Open Source MIT License, and Open Source GPL License. The Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal license does not permit copyright and is intended for public use. When closed source can be distributed and the owner wants credit for the work, the Open Source MIT License is used. The Open Source GPL License allows the project’s owner to do whatever they want with the project except distribute the closed sources.
  2. In your blog, summarize the discussions and personal analysis on Software Licenses/Options, Digital Rights, and other Legal and Ethical thoughts from this College Board topic. Personally, I believe that the Open Source GPL License should be used for our GitHub Projects. The legality and ethics of the sources require us to give credit to the owners of the sources we use from other code. Music and film companies use Digital Rights Management (DRM) to protect their content from piracy and to regulate their ownership of the content. We can use Creative Commons software in this class because we are using it for education and it is free for everyone to use. Because open source code is free, businesses do not make their licenses open source, but they require open source code online to succeed.
  3. Make a license for your personal (blog) and Team repositories for the CPT project. Be sure to have a license for both Team GitHub repositories (frontend/backend). Document license(s) you picked and why. FYI, frontend, since it is built on GitHub pages may come with a license and restrictions. Document in blog how team made license choice and process of update. I gave my repository an Open Source GPL license. For the group repository we use a GNU GPL v3.0.

5.6 Safe Computing

In 5.6 we learned abour Safe computiong and the importance of safe computing. We learned about what information should be kept secret and what we can share. We learned about how sharing certain information can actually harm us. We don’t want to share factors like a password or ssn or any other valuabel things that can be used to harm me in any way or form.

  1. Describe PII you have seen on project in CompSci Principles. On the project in CSP, the PII I’ve seen is that we know each other’s names, emails, photos, education, and, for some, birth date, addresses, and phone numbers. I’ve seen these on CSP projects because we display them on our github projects.
  2. What are your feelings about PII and your personal exposure? Because of the PII, I believe we should be cautious about what we post online. I believe it is acceptable to share our names and email addresses, but we should not share private information such as social security numbers, passwords, and other sensitive information. However, these PII may be useful for businesses to tailor their websites to our preferences in order to increase their website’s popularity.
  3. Describe good and bad passwords? What is another step that is used to assist in authentication. A good password is one that has many different types of characters: uppercase, lowercase, numbers, symbols, and punctuation. A bad password is like full words, passwords, pet names, and things that are easily known by others. Another step to assist authentication is two factor authentication. This means that two devices are needed to sign into an account.
  4. Try to describe Symmetric and Asymmetric encryption. Symmetric encryption uses a single secret key to encrypt and decrypt data. Asymmetric encryption encrypts and decrypts data using two keys, one public and one private.
  5. Provide an example of encryption we used in AWS deployment. SSL encryption is an example of encryption that we used in AWS deployment. This employs both symmetric and asymmetric encryption.
  6. Describe a phishing scheme you have learned about the hard way. Describe some other phishing techniques. I haven’t had to learn the hard way with a phishing scheme because the majority of the phishing emails I receive end up in spam. When I do come across one, I read the email and realize it is a phishing scam. But once, a friend of mine was hacked on Discord, and they sent me a file, which I almost clicked. Some phishing techniques involve sending emails that appear to be from large corporations. Furthermore, by hacking into people’s accounts and sending links to people they know