Mission 1 Extra
Posted by Adrian on September 2, 2009 at 3:21 p.m.
Don't give out your password. Don't tell anyone your address. Always be careful when meeting people you've only talked to online. We've all heard it before - so who'd be stupid enough to give some random on the internet your login details or your password?
Mission 2 Extra
Posted by Adrian on September 3, 2009 at 3:30 p.m.
Ever seen a guy or girl smiling at you, and thought that they obviously fancy you? And then you find out that they're already going out with someone else, or they hate your guts? It's easy enough to get the wrong idea about someone in real life - and it's just as easy online.
Mission 3 Extra
Posted by Adrian on September 7, 2009 at 12:56 p.m.
On their own, bits of information posted online don't mean very much, but if you join them together, they can make a surprisingly detailed picture.
Mission 4 Extra
Posted by Adrian on September 10, 2009 at 3:25 p.m.
Sometimes being anonymous on the internet can be very useful! Every computer on the internet - including yours - has an IP address. It's a series of numbers - like 79.125.13.120 - that describes the 'location' of your computer on the internet (a bit like a phone number)...
Mission 5 Extra
Posted by Adrian on September 14, 2009 at 10:36 a.m.
Hijacked!
What if you logged into Facebook right now and found your profile changed, your wall posts deleted, and settings messed up? What if someone had sent loads of messages to your mates that you didn't write? You'd probably be freaked out and angry, and for good reason: our online profiles are part of our identity.
Mission 6 Extra
Posted by Adrian on September 21, 2009 at 5:32 p.m.
Jo's not the first person who's been caught out for what they posted online. Recently, a 16-year-old was fired from her job for saying that it was "boring" on a friend's wall. A prisoner was found updating his Facebook page from inside prison, which led to lots of questions about how he got online!
Mission 7 Extra
Posted by Adrian on September 24, 2009 at 6:10 p.m.
We've all got a mate who's a bit of a gossip. Tell them a secret and by lunchtime all of your friends (and most of your enemies!) know about it. The internet is like that person - it spreads information around. It helps us to invite people to parties, share that video you made with your mates, and keep up with the latest events on Twitter, Facebook and the BBC.
Mission 8 Extra
Posted by Adrian on September 28, 2009 at 11:40 a.m.
You're sitting at your desk, your eyes drifting over the text on the screen. The index finger of your right hand clicks the mouse button; the sound echoes louder and louder in your head. Your vision blurs, the ground shifts -
Mission 9 Extra
Posted by Adrian on October 2, 2009 at 12:06 p.m.
The UK is one of the most heavily monitored countries in the world: Wandsworth in London has more CCTV cameras than Dublin, San Francisco, Boston and Johannesburg combined! It's hard to tell exactly how many cameras we have - it's anywhere from 1 million to a whopping 4.2 million, and others say that the UK has a fifth of all of the CCTV cameras that exist in the world! Schools are joining in too, as part of the Classwatch CCTV scheme - Stockwell Park School alone has one hundred cameras!
Mission 10 Extra
Posted by paul on October 9, 2009 at 4:50 p.m.
The government has broad powers to investigate your 'data shadow' - all of the information you leave behind on bank statements, online, on your mobile phone, in school records, on CCTV cameras - if they suspect you of being a terrorist. Our everyday activities create a huge amount of information, and the government has powerful tools that it can use to 'mine' this data.
Mission 11 Extra
Posted by Adrian on October 14, 2009 at 10:50 a.m.
It might sound a bit Bourne Identity to doubt whether your friends are real, but it is easy to fake your identity online. Just set up a new email account, create a profile with a fake name, fill it out with made-up information, and you're done. It has a name too: sockpuppeting.
All of us do it a little bit: we carefully choose which bands to put on our lists of favourite music, we link to websites and videos that make us seem clever, or funny, or cool. We present an edited version of ourselves online - and offline too, when we wear contacts or makeup. We certainly do it when we're out on the pull, or on a date!
Mission 12 Extra
Posted by Adrian on October 22, 2009 at 2:58 p.m.
The kind of personal details we know about celebrities and politicians would shock our grandparents. Back in the 1930s, with the help of the press, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt was able to hide his near-total paralysis from the public for years. It's unimaginable that the US President or our own PM would be able to hide such a thing today.
Mission 13 Extra
Posted by Adrian on November 4, 2009 at 12:19 p.m.
Almost everything we do on the web creates trails in the online landscape. Your investigation on Melissa's laptop shows that browsers like Internet Explorer and Firefox record a perfect picture of which websites you've visited, when you visited them, and how many times. This is handy if you're uncovering a crime - not so handy if you have a legitimate reason for keeping your browsing history private.
Smokescreen is a cutting-edge game about life online, on a new social network called White Smoke.
Explore websites, search for clues, receive phone calls, chat on IM, and tackle puzzles and minigames. On Smokescreen, who can you trust? Find out more...
