Pictured : Traditional navigation techniques will continue to be taught.
‘These days, bots search through your messages’
Getting back to nature and away from modern life has long been a feature of Dulwich Duke of Edinburgh expeditions. But with the advent of GPS, the wilderness doesn’t seem quite so wild. Mr Toby McPhilemy weighs up the advantages of trekking with technology
If you read that and wondered what this ‘cookie’ is, you are not alone: it is perhaps surprising how many people have no idea what a cookie is. This packet of data is sent by an Internet server to a browser and is returned by the browser each time it accesses the same server, so that the user can be identified or their access to the website or set of websites can be tracked. Facebook has a much more aggressive method of data collection: firstly they gather information from your likes and interests, then predict what you might like using their ‘patented algorithm’ in order to ‘suggest’ products. Back in 2012, this would be the end of it; but these days, bots (a primitive form of Artificial Intelligence) search through your messages. You enjoyed a film and told a friend about it? Next time you refresh the page, adverts for Netflix or Vue cinemas might appear. So what is wrong with this use of data? Well, technology firms are, in effect, selling your identity, your online image, by giving details of where you go online and what you look at to third-party websites you don’t know about. To illustrate this in action, I decided to conduct an experiment by visiting some of my favourite websites. First, I installed add-ons to my browser: ‘Collusion’ for Chrome or ‘Lightbeam’ for Firefox. These display visualisations of the websites you visit, but also the third party websites that track you. So, effectively you can see not only the websites you have chosen to give your data to, but also those that have ‘mined’ your data without your consent. I came up with some interesting results: while visiting 13 popular websites, including Google, Facebook, Youtube, Tumblr, Netflix, the NHS, the BBC, Huffington Post and Buzzfeed, my data was mined by another 147 sites – yes, 10 times as many – ranging from tracking sites such as AdKarma to other websites advertising companies with ridiculous names. This is a colossal amalgamation of tracking and feels like not only an invasion of privacy but even psychological manipulation. There are ways to combat all this. One is simple and, if there’s one thing to do after reading this article, it is this: if you use Google Chrome, install ‘ghostery’. It will not only block trackers but show you where your information would go if you didn’t have it. Unfortunately, other methods take you to the darker areas of the web, and towards the illegal activity that forms much of the ‘deep web’ – the area of the internet that search engines don’t tell you about. One is the Tor browser, which can access the deep web, but also allows You will be pleased that visiting the DC website and those of similar schools means your data is only sent to more generic and less sinister places such as Google analytics.
the user to move through the surface web anonymously. How it does this is very complex, but if it were to be explained this article would span many pages. As a result it is used by revolutionaries, anti-censorship campaigners in places such as China, and even Americans seeking privacy. And, as with any new technology, of course, criminals. You may have also have heard of the Silk Road, ‘the anonymous market place’, in the news. It is not illegal to browse the Silk Road but it is illegal to purchase anything from it – it makes procuring banned items as easy as shopping on Amazon. However, this site was the driving force behind the online cryptocurrency bitcoin, which has become popular because it allows people to purchase things without having to have an identity, just an encrypted ‘wallet’ that is stored on the user’s computer. I myself owned 4 bitcoins, which I purchased on eBay – you can still buy them today. When I bought them in January 2013, they were worth around £30; today that same amount would be worth £985. I spent them on a game called Goat Simulator and bacon- flavoured soap: both terrible investments. Although not as bad as the story of the student who in 2003, had 100,000 bitcoins and spent them on a $10 pizza – today that sum today would equal £24,653,109. The famous computer scientist Derek Powazek says that, ‘If the product is free, you’re not the consumer, you’re the product’. And in an age such as ours this rings true on manly levels. People have become comfortable with the way they surf the web, willy-nilly with no care, and this trend will be hard to break among coming generations. The key is to educate users of the internet: only this way can they escape the dangers and complexities of the web.
I magine the scene: daylight is fading over a campsite in the Ashdown Forest and there is at most an hour before dusk gives way to darkness. Different Duke of Edinburgh groups have been arriving over the past few hours. The first groups have cooked their dinner and are now sitting around their tents playing cards; others are struggling to bring water to the boil or to transfer food from saucepan to plate without spilling much-needed replenishment onto the forest floor. The latest arrivals are arguing over putting up the tents, about who is helping and who is not. Rain is in the air, so differences are put aside for the common good.
Electricity, mobile phones, tablet computers and games- consoles are conspicuous by their total absence. Amongst the instructors, there is general satisfaction in seeing boys enjoying the outdoor environment and putting into practice the skills they have been taught. All is going swimmingly, except for one problem: the final group of seven boys have still not arrived. Last seen an hour ago, they must have made a serious navigational error. The concern is that as darkness falls they will be harder to find. This sort of situation is a regular occurrence the length and breadth of the country – part of the time- honoured, character-building tradition of the Duke
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