Our new study, published today in the journal Information Research, suggests that leaving all your emails in the inbox is likely to leave you dissatisfied with your personal records management.

In an exploratory survey, we asked participants how they dealt with their personal records such as bills, online subscriptions and similar items. Many of these arrive by email.

We found that most respondents left their electronic records in their email. Only half saved items such as bills and other documents to other locations, like their computer or the cloud. But having a disorganised inbox also led to problems, including missing bills and losing track of important correspondence.

The risk of losing track of your emails

Receiving bills, insurance renewals and other household documents by email saves time and money, and reduces unnecessary paper use.

However, there are risks involved if you don’t stay on top of your electronic records. Respondents in our research reported issues such as lapsed vehicle registration, failing to cancel unwanted subscriptions, and overlooking tax deductions because it was too much trouble finding the receipts.

This suggests late fines and other email oversights could be costing people hundreds of dollars each year.

In addition to the financial costs, research suggests that not sorting and managing electronic records makes it more difficult to put together the information needed at tax time, or for other high-stakes situations, such as loan applications.

What did we find?

We surveyed over 300 diverse respondents on their personal electronic records management. Most of them were from Australia, but we also received responses from other countries, such as the United Kingdom, United States, Switzerland, Portugal and elsewhere.

Two-thirds of the respondents used their email to manage personal records, such as bills, receipts, subscriptions and more. Of those, we found that once respondents had dealt with their email, about half of them would sort the emails into folders, while the other half would leave everything in the inbox.

While most sorted their workplace email into folders, they were much less likely to sort their personal email in the same way.

The results also showed that only half (52%) of respondents who left all their email in the inbox were satisfied with their records management, compared to 71% of respondents who sorted their email into folders.

Of the respondents who saved their paperwork in the cloud (Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox and similar), 83% reported being satisfied with their home records management.

The study was exploratory, so further research will be needed to see if our findings apply more universally. However, our statistical analysis did reveal practices associated with more satisfactory outcomes, and ones that might be better to avoid.

What can go wrong with an inbox-only approach?

Based on the responses, we have identified three main problems with leaving all your email in the inbox.

First, users can lose track of the tasks that need to be done. For example, a bill that needs to be paid could slip down the line unnoticed, drowned by other emails.

Second, relying on search to re-find emails means you need to know exactly what you’re looking for. For example, at tax time searching for charity donation receipts depends on remembering what to search for, as well as the exact wording in the email containing the receipt.

Read More: Stop emailing yourself: the best file sharing options across devices

Third, many bills and statements are not sent as attachments to emails, but rather as hyperlinks. If you change your bank or another service provider, those hyperlinks may not be accessible at a later date. Not being able to access missing payslips from a former employer can also cause issues, as shown by the Robodebt scandal or the recent case of the Australian Tax Office reviving old debts.

4 tips for better records management

When we asked respondents to nominate a preferred location for keeping their personal records, they tended to choose a more organised format than their current behaviour. Ideally, only 8% of the respondents would leave everything in their email inbox, unsorted.

Our findings suggest a set of practices that can help you get on top of your electronic records and prevent stress or financial losses:

• sort your email into category folders, or save records in folders in the cloud or on a computer
• download documents that are not attached to emails or sent to you – such as utility bills and all your payslips
• put important renewals in your calendar as reminders, and
• delete junk mail and unsubscribe, so that your inbox can be turned into a to-do list.

• Matt Balogh is an Adjunct Lecturer, University of New England
• This article first appeared in The Conversation

Struggling to find relevant sources for your review? Inciteful will list suitable articles with just the click of a button. Are your human research participants too expensive or complicated to manage? Not a problem – try synthetic participants instead.

Each of these tools suggests AI could be superior to humans in outlining and explaining concepts or ideas. But can humans be replaced when it comes to qualitative research?

This is something we recently had to grapple with while carrying out unrelated research into mobile dating during the COVID-19 pandemic. And what we found should temper enthusiasm for artificial responses over the words of human participants.

The rise of AI in academia sparks a debate: How do we balance technological advancement with ethical integrity in research? Misidentification and casual accusations highlight the fragile line between innovation and authenticity. Nature https://t.co/JuB9ZoV2jI

— Genetic Literacy Project (@GeneticLiteracy) March 15, 2024

Encountering AI in our research

Our research is looking at how people might navigate mobile dating during the pandemic in Aotearoa New Zealand. Our aim was to explore broader social responses to mobile dating as the pandemic progressed and as public health mandates changed over time.

As part of this ongoing research, we prompt participants to develop stories in response to hypothetical scenarios.

In 2021 and 2022 we received a wide range of intriguing and quirky responses from 110 New Zealanders recruited through Facebook. Each participant received a gift voucher for their time.

Participants described characters navigating the challenges of “Zoom dates” and clashing over vaccination statuses or wearing masks. Others wrote passionate love stories with eyebrow-raising details. Some even broke the fourth wall and wrote directly to us, complaining about the mandatory word length of their stories or the quality of our prompts.

These responses captured the highs and lows of online dating, the boredom and loneliness of lockdown, and the thrills and despair of finding love during the time of COVID-19.

But, perhaps most of all, these responses reminded us of the idiosyncratic and irreverent aspects of human participation in research – the unexpected directions participants go in, or even the unsolicited feedback you can receive when doing research.

But in the latest round of our study in late 2023, something had clearly changed across the 60 stories we received.

This time many of the stories felt “off”. Word choices were quite stilted or overly formal. And each story was quite moralistic in terms of what one “should” do in a situation.

Using AI detection tools, such as ZeroGPT, we concluded participants – or even bots – were using AI to generate story answers for them, possibly to receive the gift voucher for minimal effort.

Contrary to claims that AI can sufficiently replicate human participants in research, we found AI-generated stories to be woeful.

We were reminded that an essential ingredient of any social research is for the data to be based on lived experience.

Is AI the problem?

Perhap the biggest threat to human research is not AI, but rather the philosophy that underscores it.

It is worth noting the majority of claims about AI’s capabilities to replace humans come from computer scientists or quantitative social scientists. In these types of studies, human reasoning or behaviour is often measured through scorecards or yes/no statements.

This approach necessarily fits human experience into a framework that can be more easily analysed through computational or artificial interpretation.

In contrast, we are qualitative researchers who are interested in the messy, emotional, lived experience of people’s perspectives on dating. We were drawn to the thrills and disappointments participants originally pointed to with online dating, the frustrations and challenges of trying to use dating apps, as well as the opportunities they might create for intimacy during a time of lockdowns and evolving health mandates.

Read More: Emotion-tracking AI on the job: Workers fear being watched – and misunderstood

In general, we found AI poorly simulated these experiences.

Some might accept generative AI is here to stay, or that AI should be viewed as offering various tools to researchers. Other researchers might retreat to forms of data collection, such as surveys, that might minimise the interference of unwanted AI participation.

But, based on our recent research experience, we believe theoretically-driven, qualitative social research is best equipped to detect and protect against AI interference.

There are additional implications for research. The threat of AI as an unwanted participant means researchers will have to work longer or harder to spot imposter participants.

Academic institutions need to start developing policies and practices to reduce the burden on individual researchers trying to carry out research in the changing AI environment.

Regardless of researchers’ theoretical orientation, how we work to limit the involvement of AI is a question for anyone interested in understanding human perspectives or experiences. If anything, the limitations of AI reemphasise the importance of being human in social research.

• Alexandra Gibson is a Senior Lecturer in Health Psychology, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington
• Alex Beattie is a Research Fellow, School of Health, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington
• This article first appeared in The Conversation

Jess Auerbach Jahajeeah, an associate professor at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business, is currently writing a book on fibre optic cables and digital connectivity. She spent time in late 2023 aboard the ship whose crew is responsible for maintaining most of Africa’s undersea network. She spoke to The Conversation Africa about the importance of these cables.

1. What’s the geographical extent of Africa’s current undersea network?

Fibre optic cables now literally encircle Africa, though some parts of the continent are far better connected than others. This is because both public and private organisations have made major investments in the past ten years.

Based on an interactive map of fibre optic cables, it’s clear that South Africa is in a relatively good position. When the breakages happened, the network was affected for a few hours before the internet traffic was rerouted; a technical process that depends both on there being alternative routes available and corporate agreements in place to enable the rerouting. It’s the same as driving using a tool like Google Maps. If there’s an accident on the road it finds another way to get you to your destination.

But, in several African countries – including Sierra Leone and Liberia – most of the cables don’t have spurs (the equivalent of off-ramps on the road), so only one fibre optic cable actually comes into the country. Internet traffic from these countries basically stops when the cable breaks.

Naturally that has huge implications for every aspect of life, business and even politics. Whilst some communication can be rerouted via satellites, satellite traffic accounts for only about 1% of digital transmissions globally. Even with interventions such as satellite-internet distribution service Starlink it’s still much slower and much more expensive than the connection provided by undersea cables.

Basically all internet for regular people relies on fibre optic cables. Even landlocked countries rely on the network, because they have agreements with countries with landing stations – highly-secured buildings close to the ocean where the cable comes up from underground and is plugged into terrestrial systems. For example southern Africa’s internet comes largely through connections in Melkbosstrand, just outside Cape Town, and Mtunzini in northern KwaZulu-Natal, both in South Africa. Then it’s routed overland to various neighbours.

Each fibre optic cable is extremely expensive to build and to maintain. Depending on the technical specifications (cables can have more or fewer fibre threads and enable different speeds for digital traffic) there are complex legal agreements in place for who is responsible for which aspects of maintenance.

2. What prompted you to write a book about the social history of fibre optic cables in Africa?

I first visited Angola in 2011 to start work for my PhD project. The internet was all but non-existent – sending an email took several minutes at the time. Then I went back in 2013, after the South Atlantic Cable System went into operation. It made an incredible difference: suddenly Angola’s digital ecosystem was up and running and everybody was online.

At the time I was working on social mobility and how people in Angola were improving their lives after a long war. Unsurprisingly, having digital access made all sorts of things possible that simply weren’t imaginable before. I picked up my interest again once I was professionally established, and am now writing it up as a book, Capricious Connections. The title refers to the fact that the cables wouldn’t do anything if it wasn’t for the infrastructure that they plug into at various points.

Landing centres such as Sangano in Angola are fascinating both because of what they do technically (connecting and routing internet traffic all over the country) and because they often highlight the complexities of the digital divide.

For example, Sangano is a remarkable high-tech facility run by an incredibly competent and socially engaged company, Angola Cables. Yet the school a few hundred metres from the landing station still doesn’t have electricity.

When we think about the digital divide in Africa, that’s often still the reality: you can bring internet everywhere but if there’s no infrastructure, skills or frameworks to make it accessible, it can remain something abstract even for those who live right beside it.

In terms of history, fibre optic cables follow all sorts of fascinating global precedents. The 2012 cable that connected one side of the Atlantic Ocean to the other is laid almost exactly over the route of the transatlantic slave trade, for example. Much of the basic cable map is layered over the routes of the copper telegraph network that was essential for the British empire in the 1800s.

Most of Africa’s cables are maintained at sea by the remarkable crew of the ship Léon Thévenin. I joined them in late 2023 during a repair operation off the coast of Ghana. These are uniquely skilled artisans and technicians who retrieve and repair cables, sometimes from depths of multiple kilometres under the ocean.

When I spent time with the crew last year, they recounted once accidentally retrieving a section of Victorian-era cable when they were trying to “catch” a much more recent fibre optic line. (Cables are retrieved in many ways; one way is with a grapnel-like hook that is dragged along the ocean bed in roughly the right location until it snags the cable.)

There are some very interesting questions emerging now about what is commonly called digital colonialism. In an environment where data is often referred to with terms like “the new oil”, we’re seeing an important change in digital infrastructure.

Previously cables were usually financed by a combination of public and private sector partnerships, but now big private companies such as Alphabet, Meta and Huawei are increasingly financing cable infrastructure. That has serious implications for control and monitoring of digital infrastructure.

Given we all depend so much on digital tools, poorer countries often have little choice but to accept the terms and conditions of wealthy corporate entities. That’s potentially incredibly dangerous for African digital sovereignty, and is something we should be seeing a lot more public conversation about.

• Jess Auerbach Jahajeeah is an Associate Professor, Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town
• This article first appeared in The Conversation

Those executives heading up job boards have also been picking up on the trend, with the job offers extending across the likes of sales and call centre agents; brand executives; insurance claims specialists; foremen and all kinds of artisans; technical application specialists; finance services/banking jobs; and various engineering positions.

The reasons backing this hiring trajectory range from the fluency of our English and a cultural compatibility that helps to avoid language-related misunderstandings; the extent to which we are entrepreneurially minded and well educated, with a high unemployment rate in our home country; the possibility of hiring excellent calibre individuals for a lower potential salary range than someone in the United States or Canada would require, especially if this is a South African who can set themselves up remotely from South Africa; and the fact that servicing clients across Europe (all day), the US/Canada (in the afternoon), or even Australia (first thing in the morning) is generally seamless from South Africa.

While South Africans are renowned for their work ethic, those with enviable skills and qualifications may unfortunately not be able to find a suitable position in the job market at home because of societal-levelling policies such as B-BBEE.

Working remotely for a US company

Once found to be competent from a qualifications and skills perspective, the South African candidate will be required to set themselves up with the following considerations top of mind:
• remaining forever cognisant of the time difference;
• maintaining a dedicated and distraction-free workspace;
• putting uncapped fibre in place, for best-in-class digital communications; and
• setting boundaries related to after-hours hobbies, sport, and family time.

Further, while it is theoretically feasible to work for a US company remotely from anywhere in the world, it is important that the hiring company meets all the legal requirements of taking you on board. See more, here.

Working for a US company with a regional office in South Africa

Another alternative is to apply for a position at one of 600 North American companies that now have regional (i.e. African) offices located in South Africa. If you are skilled, senior, and would prefer to keep your search confidential (say, from the company at which you are currently employed), it is generally a good idea to make enquiries as to the global employment opportunities that an executive search firm may have on their books.

It goes without saying that these hiring companies will benefit from lower labour costs than they would have back home (as a result of the exchange rate), while those they hire in much-sought-after roles could stand to earn more than they could for a South African company.

Immigrating to the US/Canada

A third option, of course, involves a North American company seeking a South African staff member who is prepared to immigrate to the United States or Canada. A blog on Wise.com advises that employment is the fastest and easiest way to gain a Green Card and make the move, especially if the company you will be working for when you arrive makes all the legal arrangements and pays all the relocation costs on your behalf.

Just be sure to do your research as to the salary you will require to support your family on the level you are accustomed to, taking into account that a meal at an inexpensive restaurant in the US/Canada will set you back about R375 to R400 (around US$20) per person, versus approximately R125 (under US$7) per person in South Africa.

Whichever of the above-mentioned paths you take to end up employed by an American or Canadian company, the way in which South Africans are viewed by these hiring companies generally remains rose-tinted – because we’re known to be a skilled, qualified, and hard-working nationality.

In return, for those battling to find suitable employment with a South African company, your new employer stands to offer you better wages and a higher standard of living, more travel opportunities (as you’ll probably be expected to visit that US/Canada head office at least biannually), and a resumé that catches your next potential employer’s eye and impresses beyond the pale: “You’ve worked for Amazon/Google/Microsoft?” Yes, indeed!

This vast ocean of online material needs to be constantly monitored for harmful or illegal content, like promoting terrorism and violence.

The sheer volume of content means that it’s not possible for people to inspect and check all of it manually, which is why automated tools, including artificial intelligence (AI), are essential. But such tools also have their limitations.

The concerted effort in recent years to develop tools for the identification and removal of online terrorist content has, in part, been fuelled by the emergence of new laws and regulations. This includes the EU’s terrorist content online regulation, which requires hosting service providers to remove terrorist content from their platform within one hour of receiving a removal order from a competent national authority.

Behaviour and content-based tools

In broad terms, there are two types of tools used to root out terrorist content. The first looks at certain account and message behaviour. This includes how old the account is, the use of trending or unrelated hashtags and abnormal posting volume.

In many ways, this is similar to spam detection, in that it does not pay attention to content, and is valuable for detecting the rapid dissemination of large volumes of content, which are often bot-driven.

The second type of tool is content-based. It focuses on linguistic characteristics, word use, images and web addresses. Automated content-based tools take one of two approaches.

1. Matching

The first approach is based on comparing new images or videos to an existing database of images and videos that have previously been identified as terrorist in nature. One challenge here is that terror groups are known to try and evade such methods by producing subtle variants of the same piece of content.

After the Christchurch terror attack in New Zealand in 2019, for example, hundreds of visually distinct versions of the livestream video of the atrocity were in circulation.

So, to combat this, matching-based tools generally use perceptual hashing rather than cryptographic hashing. Hashes are a bit like digital fingerprints, and cryptographic hashing acts like a secure, unique identity tag. Even changing a single pixel in an image drastically alters its fingerprint, preventing false matches.

Perceptual hashing, on the other hand, focuses on similarity. It overlooks minor changes like pixel colour adjustments, but identifies images with the same core content. This makes perceptual hashing more resilient to tiny alterations to a piece of content. But it also means that the hashes are not entirely random, and so could potentially be used to try and recreate the original image.

2. Classification

The second approach relies on classifying content. It uses machine learning and other forms of AI, such as natural language processing. To achieve this, the AI needs a lot of examples like texts labelled as terrorist content or not by human content moderators. By analysing these examples, the AI learns which features distinguish different types of content, allowing it to categorise new content on its own.

Once trained, the algorithms are then able to predict whether a new item of content belongs to one of the specified categories. These items may then be removed or flagged for human review.

This approach also faces challenges, however. Collecting and preparing a large dataset of terrorist content to train the algorithms is time-consuming and resource-intensive.

The training data may also become dated quickly, as terrorists make use of new terms and discuss new world events and current affairs. Algorithms also have difficulty understanding context, including subtlety and irony. They also lack cultural sensitivity, including variations in dialect and language use across different groups.

These limitations can have important offline effects. There have been documented failures to remove hate speech in countries such as Ethiopia and Romania, while free speech activists in countries such as Egypt, Syria and Tunisia have reported having their content removed.

We still need human moderators

So, in spite of advances in AI, human input remains essential. It is important for maintaining databases and datasets, assessing content flagged for review and operating appeals processes for when decisions are challenged.

But this is demanding and draining work, and there have been damning reports regarding the working conditions of moderators, with many tech companies such as Meta outsourcing this work to third-party vendors.

To address this, we recommend the development of a set of minimum standards for those employing content moderators, including mental health provision. There is also potential to develop AI tools to safeguard the well-being of moderators. This would work, for example, by blurring out areas of images so that moderators can reach a decision without viewing disturbing content directly.

But at the same time, few, if any, platforms have the resources needed to develop automated content moderation tools and employ a sufficient number of human reviewers with the required expertise.

Many platforms have turned to off-the-shelf products. It is estimated that the content moderation solutions market will be worth $32bn by 2031.

Read More: AI: the silent partner in your side hustle

But caution is needed here. Third-party providers are not currently subject to the same level of oversight as tech platforms themselves. They may rely disproportionately on automated tools, with insufficient human input and a lack of transparency regarding the datasets used to train their algorithms.

So, collaborative initiatives between governments and the private sector are essential. For example, the EU-funded Tech Against Terrorism Europe project has developed valuable resources for tech companies. There are also examples of automated content moderation tools being made openly available like Meta’s Hasher-Matcher-Actioner, which companies can use to build their own database of hashed terrorist content.

International organisations, governments and tech platforms must prioritise the development of such collaborative resources. Without this, effectively addressing online terror content will remain elusive.

• Stuart Macdonald is a Professor of Law, Swansea University
• Ashley A. Mattheis is a Postdoctoral Researcher, School of Law and Government, Dublin City University
• David Wells is an Honorary Research Associate at the Cyber Threats Research Centre, Swansea University
• This article first appeared in The Conversation

Here are some essential tips to safeguard yourself and your data during the festive period:

Phishing

Phishing is when criminals use scam emails, text messages or phone calls to trick their victims. Their goal is often to make you visit a certain website, which may download a virus on to your computer, or steal bank details or other personal data.

This type of scam tends to increase at this time due to the amount of people having bought or received new gadgets and technology.

Look out for there being no direct reference to your name in any communications, with wording such as “Dear Sir/Madam” or other terms such as “valued customer” being used instead. Grammar and spelling mistakes are also often present.

Be wary of any suspicious links or attachments within emails too, and don’t click them. It’s better to contact the company directly to check if the message is genuine. You can also report suspicious messages and phishing scams to the government’s National Cyber Security Centre.

Shopping safely online

The convenience of online shopping is undeniable, especially during the festive season. However, it’s crucial to prioritise your security when buying online.

Before entering your personal and financial information on any website, ensure it’s legitimate and secure. Look for the “https” in the address bar and a padlock icon, which indicates a secure and encrypted connection.

When creating passwords for online shopping accounts, use strong, unique combinations of letters, numbers and symbols. Avoid using the same password for multiple accounts, as a breach on one site could compromise all your others.

As with shopping in the real world, be cautious when encountering offers that are significantly below usual prices or which make extravagant promises. Always conduct thorough research on the seller and product before making a purchase. If a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is.

And if you are out shopping in towns or city centres, there will often be a large number of public wifi options available to you. However, criminals can intercept the data that is transferred across such open and unsecured wifi. So, avoid using public wifi where possible, especially when conducting any financial transactions.

Social media

While social media platforms provide people with a means to keep in touch with family and friends over the festive period, they are often a goldmine for scams and malware (software designed to disrupt, damage or gain unauthorised access to a computer). In the spirit of the festive season, people often share an abundance of personal information on social media, often without considering the potential consequences.

This trove of data can make people vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Scammers can exploit this information to gain unauthorised access to social media accounts, steal personal information, or even commit identity theft. To protect yourself, be mindful of what you share.

Be wary when interacting with posts and direct messages, especially if they contain suspicious links or attachments. Before clicking on anything, hover over the link to verify its destination. If it shows a website you don’t recognise or seems unrelated to the message, do not click on it. If you receive a message from someone you know but the content seems strange or out of character, contact them directly through a trusted channel to verify its authenticity.

Likewise, be wary of messages containing urgent requests for money or personal information from businesses. Genuine organisations will never solicit sensitive details through social media.

There are many buy and sell platforms available on social media. But while such platforms can be a great place to find a unique gift, it is also important to remember that not all sellers may be legitimate. So, it’s vital that you don’t share your bank details. If the seller sends a link to purchase the item, do not use it. When meeting to collect an item, it’s generally safer to use cash rather than transferring funds electronically.

Package delivery scams

As well as being a time for giving and receiving gifts, the festive season is also ripe for cybercriminals to exploit the excitement surrounding package deliveries.

Scammers often pose as legitimate delivery companies, sending emails or text messages claiming that a delivery attempt was unsuccessful or requiring additional fees for processing, or even customs clearance. Typically, these messages contain links or phone numbers that, when clicked or called, lead to fake websites or automated phone systems designed to collect personal information or payments.

Read More: Governments and hackers agree: the laws of war must apply in cyberspace

To protect yourself, always verify the legitimacy of any delivery notifications you receive. Check the sender’s email address or phone number against the official contact information for the delivery company. If the information doesn’t match or seems suspicious, don’t click any links or provide personal details.

Legitimate delivery companies will never ask for upfront payment or sensitive information through unsolicited messages or calls.

Remember, cybercriminals are skilled at manipulating the festive spirit to their advantage. Stay vigilant, exercise caution, and don’t let your excitement for gifts and deliveries compromise your cybersecurity.

• Rachael Medhurst is a  Course Leader and Senior Lecturer in Cyber Security NCSA, University of South Wales
• This article first appeared in The Conversation

Disinformation is deliberately generated misleading content disseminated for selfish or malicious purposes. Unlike misinformation, which may be shared unwittingly or with good intentions, disinformation aims to foment distrust, destabilize institutions, discredit good intentions, defame opponents and delegitimize sources of knowledge such as science and journalism.

Many governments engage in disinformation campaigns. For instance, the Russian government has used images of celebrities to attract attention to anti-Ukraine propaganda. Meta, parent company of Facebook and Instagram, warned on Nov. 30, 2023, that China has stepped up its disinformation operations.

Disinformation is nothing new, and information warfare has been practiced by many countries, including the U.S. But the internet gives disinformation campaigns unprecedented reach. Foreign governments, internet trolls, domestic and international extremists, opportunistic profiteers and even paid disinformation agencies exploit the internet to spread questionable content. Periods of civil unrest, natural disasters, health crises and wars trigger anxiety and the hunt for information, which disinformation agents take advantage of.

Certainly it’s worth watching for the warning signs for misinformation and dangerous speech, but there are additional tactics disinformation agents employ.

It’s just a joke

Hahaganda is a tactic in which disinformation agents use memes, political comedy from state-run outlets, or speeches to make light of serious matters, attack others, minimize violence or dehumanize, and deflect blame.

This approach provides an easy defense: If challenged, the disinformation agents can say, “Can’t you take a joke?” often followed by accusations of being too politically correct.

Shhh … tell everyone

Rumor-milling is a tactic in which the disinformation agents claim to have exclusive access to secrets they allege are being purposefully concealed. They indicate that you will “only hear this here” and will imply that others are unwilling to share the alleged truth – for example, “The media won’t report this” or “The government doesn’t want you to know” and “I shouldn’t be telling you this … .”

But they do not insist that the information be kept secret, and will instead include encouragement to share it – for example, “Make this go viral” or “Most people won’t have the courage to share this.” It’s important to question how an author or speaker could have come by such “secret” information and what their motive is to prompt you to share it.

People are saying

Often disinformation has no real evidence, so instead disinformation agents will find or make up people to support their assertions. This impersonation can take multiple forms. Disinformation agents will use anecdotes as evidence, especially sympathetic stories from vulnerable groups such as women or children.

Similarly, they may disseminate “concerned citizens’” perspectives. These layperson experts present their social identity as providing the authority to speak on a matter; “As a mother …,” “As a veteran …,” “As a police officer ….” Convert communicators, or people who allegedly change from the “wrong” position to the “right” one, can be especially persuasive, such as the woman who got an abortion but regretted it. These people often don’t actually exist or may be coerced or paid.

Read More: Citizens’ social media can provide an antidote to propaganda and disinformation

If ordinary people don’t suffice, fake experts may be used. Some are fabricated, and you can watch out for “inauthentic user” behavior, for example, by checking X – formerly Twitter – accounts using the Botometer. But fake experts can come in different varieties.

• A faux expert is someone used for their title but doesn’t have actual relevant expertise.
• A pseudoexpert is someone who claims relevant expertise but has no actual training.
• A junk expert is a sellout. They may have had expertise once but now say whatever is profitable. You can often find these people have supported other dubious claims – for example, that smoking doesn’t cause cancer – or work for institutes that regularly produce questionable “scholarship.”
• An echo expert is when disinformation sources cite each other to provide credence for their claims. China and Russia routinely cite one another’s newspapers.
• A stolen expert is someone who exists, but they weren’t actually contacted and their research is misinterpreted. Likewise, disinformation agents also steal credibility from known news sources, such as by typosquatting, the practice of setting up a domain name that closely resembles a legitimate organization’s.

You can check whether accounts, anecdotal or scientific, have been verified by other reliable sources. Google the name. Check expertise status, source validity and interpretation of research. Remember, one story or interpretation is not necessarily representative.

It’s all a conspiracy

Conspiratorial narratives involve some malevolent force – for example, “the deep state,” – engaged in covert actions with the aim to cause harm to society. That certain conspiracies such as MK-Ultra and Watergate have been confirmed is often offered as evidence for the validity of new unfounded conspiracies.

Nonetheless, disinformation agents find that constructing a conspiracy is an effective means to remind people of past reasons to distrust governments, scientists or other trustworthy sources.

But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Remember, the conspiracies that were ultimately unveiled had evidence – often from sources like investigative journalists, scientists and government investigations. Be particularly wary of conspiracies that try to delegitimize knowledge-producing institutions like universities, research labs, government agencies and news outlets by claiming that they are in on a cover-up.

Good vs. evil

Disinformation often serves the dual purpose of making the originator look good and their opponents look bad. Disinformation takes this further by painting issues as a battle between good and evil, using accusations of evilness to legitimize violence. Russia is particularly fond of accusing others of being secret Nazis, pedophiles or Satanists. Meanwhile, they often depict their soldiers as helping children and the elderly.

Be especially wary of accusations of atrocities like genocide, especially under the attention-grabbing “breaking news” headline. Accusations abound. Verify the facts and how the information was obtained.

Are you with us or against us?

A false dichotomy narrative sets up the reader to believe that they have one of two mutually exclusive options; a good or a bad one, a right or a wrong one, a red pill or a blue pill. You can accept their version of reality or be an idiot or “sheeple.”

There are always more options than those being presented, and issues are rarely so black and white. This is just one of the tactics in brigading, where disinformation agents seek to silence dissenting viewpoints by casting them as the wrong choice.

Turning the tables

Whataboutism is a classic Russian disinformation technique they use to deflect attention from their own wrongdoings by alleging the wrongdoings of others. These allegations about the actions of others may be true or false but are nonetheless irrelevant to the matter at hand. The potential past wrongs of one group does not mean you should ignore the current wrongs of another.

Disinformation agents also often cast their group as the wronged party. They only engage in disinformation because their “enemy” engages in disinformation against them; they only attack to defend; and their reaction was appropriate, while that of others was an overreaction. This type of competitive victimhood is particularly pervasive when groups have been embedded in a long-lasting conflict.

In all of these cases, the disinformation agent is aware that they are deflecting, misleading, trolling or outright fabricating. If you don’t believe them, they at least want to make you question what, if anything, you can believe.

You often look into the things you buy rather than taking the advertising at face value before you hand over your money. This should also go for what information you buy into.

• H. Colleen Sinclair is an Associate Research Professor of Social Psychology, Louisiana State University
• This article first appeared in The Conversation

ASUS has a cutting-edge networking solution that combines the power of a traditional router with the versatility of mobile connectivity. Imagine simply plugging your phone into your router using a USB cable and instantly being able to share your internet with everyone connected to your WiFi.  This innovative feature in ASUS routers opens new possibilities for seamless internet access, even when your primary internet provider is down for whatever reason.

So how does it work?

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where your home internet is down, and you desperately need to get everyone in your home online again? That’s where 4G/5G mobile tethering comes in. Simply connect your ASUS router with a USB cable to your smartphone and share your mobile internet connection with everyone already connected to your router. Turning your Wi-Fi router into a 4G or 5G router.

Your smartphone can also serve as a backup Wide Area Network (WAN) internet connection through the same tethering connection, which will automatically become available when your primary internet connection is down or unavailable.

Signal Strength and Coverage

Thanks to the revolutionary AiMesh technology from ASUS, you can link up to five ASUS extendable routers throughout your home into a single network. This results in seamless whole-home coverage and eliminates any Wi-Fi dead spots. When combining this with a single tethered cellular internet connection, every corner of your home can enjoy 4G or 5G internet speeds on multiple devices simultaneously without compromising performance.

So, whether you use fibre, DSL, or cellular internet to stream HD videos, play online games, or download large files, you can rely on ASUS routers to provide a consistently fast and stable internet connection throughout your entire home.

User Experience

Setting up a router can sometimes feel daunting. However, ASUS has taken the hassle out of the installation and setup process for all their routers with the ASUS Router App. The user-friendly interface makes navigating through the router’s settings feel like a breeze. Within minutes, you’ll have your router up and running without breaking a sweat. Additionally, ASUS provides comprehensive documentation, and its customer support team is readily available to assist with any queries or technical issues you may encounter.

Highly Secure

What’s more, ASUS Extendable Routers are highly secure. They leverage updates from Trend Micro to shield your network by blocking malicious sites and isolating infected devices. This helps to protect your devices and your data from online threats. Furthermore, they also help shield your phone from overheating and keep your battery health stable.

Final Verdict

In conclusion, ASUS Extendable Routers with 4G/5G USB Mobile Tethering are a true game-changer in the world of routers. With its simple setup process, user-friendly interface, and exceptional customer support, ASUS has crafted a Plug and Share fortress. So, if you’re in the market for a reliable, fast, and easy-to-use router, an ASUS Extendable Router should be at the top of your list. Say goodbye to Wi-Fi dead zones and hello to uninterrupted browsing bliss.

We find ourselves in an increasingly digital world, where connectivity is paramount, but security concerns loom large. A VPN protects your data and privacy, especially when travelling to foreign lands or connecting to unsecured networks.

What is a VPN

A VPN can act as a guardian for your digital existence. Whether you’re sipping espresso at a café in Paris or navigating the bustling streets of Tokyo, having a VPN on your device encrypts your data and masks your location by establishing a secure tunnel between your device and the internet.

Originally designed to bypass regional restrictions for streaming services and overcome government censorship, the modern VPN is a comprehensive solution for protecting online activities.

This makes it a formidable challenge for hackers to swipe your passwords and sensitive information. Oh, and our favourite part — a VPN opens up access to websites that might be restricted in the country you’re visiting.

Neither here or there

In countries like Russia, China, and Iran, where VPNs face heavy restrictions or bans, and in places where governments keep a watchful eye on online activities, having a VPN becomes more than a convenience – it’s a necessity.

For instance, mainland China blocks access to YouTube therefore, if you’d like to continue streaming your favourite content while abroad, a VPN is your answer.

Recent events, like the Russia-Ukraine war, and the conflict between Israel and Palestine, underscore the importance of VPNs. Using the technology, those affected by internet restrictions can still access mass social media and media coverage in war-torn countries.

Not all good

However, it’s important to note that VPNs may limit connection speed, leading to a slightly slower online experience.

Real-time encryption, a key feature of VPNs, causes this speed dip. Despite this, the best VPNs aim to minimise latency under typical circumstances.

Users may experience these issues with specific websites, and some websites may even block the use of VPNs as they build more robust security into their apps. Some users have experienced difficulties accessing widely used apps like Facebook or Netflix while browsing on a VPN. This is due to a number of reasons. Blocked connections in the United Arab Emirates, for instance, are caused by the fact that the government forbids VPN use.

The best options for South Africans

Speedy boi: NordVPN

Key Features:

• It’s fast and has an extensive server network.
• No logs policy for increased privacy.
• Good security measures.
• 30-day money-back option.

TIP: The Standard plan is pretty affordable at $3 (R56) per month (a special price at the time of writing), and suits the VPN needs of most South Africans.

On a budget: Surfshark

Key Features:

• Budget-friendly VPN without compromising on security.
• Strict no-logs policy.
• Effectively bypasses geo-restrictions and government blocks.
• From $1.99 (R40) per month at the time of writing.

Quick and expensive: ExpressVPN

Key Features:

• Unblocks both South African and international streaming sites.
• Robust security protocols with a strict no-logs policy.
• Option for anonymous purchases.
• One of the more expensive options from $12.95 (R250) per month.

I’m a ghost: CyberGhost

Key Features:

• Affordable alternative with robust security features.
• Fast speeds and a strict no-logs policy.
• Simple site unblocking.
• From just $2.03 (R40) per month.

Make it custom: IPVanish

Key Features:

• No-logs service offering customization of IP addresses at specific intervals.
• Extensive server network.
• From $2.99 (R56) per month at the time of writing.

Before we get into that, a little bit about how the feature works. Users can create a new alias that spins off the main profile. When you’re finished making one (or four), it’s possible to switch between each without logging out. If you’ve ever swapped between a business and personal Facebook account, you’ll know how it works. If you haven’t… well, you’re about to find out.

What’s the point?

The ability to create multiple profiles has been in testing for a while. Meta says the move was driven by feedback that “…clearer organization of friends, groups, and interests helps them feel freer to engage with the audience they believe is most relevant”. In other words, people want one Facebook account for sports, one for anime, one for family, and one for… whatever.

Some features of the social media platform won’t be available to alias profiles. If you’re fond of using Facebook Marketplace, Dating, Professional Mode, or giving Zuckerberg money, you’ll have to do all of those via the main profile. Messenger will be available to alternative profiles but, as with the restricted features, it looks like Meta is keeping the door open for enabling or restricting features in future. It depends how folks behave, we supposed. If you screw it up for everyone else by using your multiple profiles to be a troll… well, this is why we can’t have nice things.

The feature started rolling out globally last week, a process that will apparently take several months to finish. Once it’s enabled for you, a popup will offer instructions for how to create more targeted profiles (which Zuckerberg totally won’t use to create more targeted ads for you).