PII Luncheon: Cyber Bullying - Cyber Security

January 23rd, PII hosted Captain Joseph Rampolla from the Park Ridge Police Department in a PII Luncheon. The topics that Captain Joseph Rampolla addressed was Cyber Bullying – Cyber Security.

He started off by speaking about young people and their love for technology. The main concern he spoke about first was “being safe”, he informed the guests of the digital tsunami (everything could be done over the web) and being in harm’s way and how to avoid it. He mentioned how the internet has a lot of awesome places to be and at the same time, there are places where nobody should be.

He briefly touched up on predators being out there on the web with bad intentions, and his experience disguised as a predator online trying to identify other predators which he was very successful at, these predators wanted to hurt children.

The next topic he addressed was “addiction”. He asked the audience, if there are any good things about being addicted, there really isn’t much. He suggested everyone should keep track of their digital lives, being out there (online, texting, posting etc) for long periods of time could be dangerous. He doesn’t want to ban technology just wants everyone to have a healthy balance when it comes to technology. People are getting hurt because they are consumed into technology, they don’t realize what going on around them.

He briefly spoke about the history of technology and now when new technology comes out it hits the masses in no time. He spoke about the dangers of video chatting and how some bad situations come up because of it. He said that the smart phone that he holds in his hand is more dangerous than the gun he holds.  Technology (social media) could ruin people’s lives, and we should realize the power of that.

He advised everyone to always update their computers and antivirus to protect their computers from hackers. Hackers could obtain anyone’s personal information without them having a clue.

He ended by talking about “geo tagging” which is when you take a picture of yourself it shows everyone your exact location, which could be very dangerous, so he urges everyone to disable there geo tagging.

We as the Peace Islands Institute would like to thank Captain Joseph Rampolla for accepting our request to speak on this very important topic

Pictures from the Event:

Executive Director Ercan Tozan

Captain Joseph Rampolla