Team: 12
School: Sandia Preparatory
Area of Science: Cybersecurity, computer science
Proposal: Technology is a major part of our lives. We shop, pay, visit and work from our devices. And now especially is a major time increase for the use of technology. But, as with anything, there are problems. In 2012, identity theft was blamed for $4 billion of fraudulent tax refunds by the Internal Revenue Service and 770,000 taxpayers have been the victims of tax identity theft by 2013. That’s a lot. The online identity theft rate continues to increase. In 2014 estimates showed that almost a third of Americans had been victims of identity theft in one way or another, an enormous increase from just one ninth in 2010.
So how do we stop this trend and protect our private information? This is what my partner and I are trying to figure out. We could use multi-level encryption, take time to educate the populace, or even develop a browser extension or a “man in the middle†to protect info, using python code. We can code it so that when your device transmits the information, it can be coded so the pattern can be recognized (like a phone number), and double check that you actually want to send that information.
Team Members:
Sponsoring Teacher: Joelle Shaw