To Theorize Incessantly

Ok, so, if you wanted to get to know how many devices access the internet, and say, wanted to be able to track and possibly remotely access those devices, how would go about doing it?

First, you would need to know the devices DNS address. That is the secret address that every device, computer, tablet, phone has assigned to it so that it can access the internet.

Second, you would need people to voluntarily give you that information so that it would be legally obtained.

How do you do that? Maybe freak people out that they might have a computer virus and you can check their device for them?

If you want to have a conspiracy theory about the government, then this would be a huge one. On April 24th, 2012, the U.S. CERT site (Computer Emergency Readiness Team) posted that a criminal cyber ring working under a company called Rove Digital may have infected millions of devices in the U.S. with malware software that interrupts your devices transmissions through the internet. Somehow, the government will be able to disable ALL of these said infected devices on July 9th, 2012 with a magical flip of a switch. So, of course, one cannot have their internet dependent life interrupted, so the government has graciously invited individuals to sign onto a website: www.dns-ok.us and check to see if their device is infected. If you get a GREEN screen, you’re OK, RED your device will be dead. Now comes the choice, do you believe in the threat and let the government have your DNS, or risk it’s false, and then possibly have your device shut down?

One thing is for sure…any device checking the site, the government will have its DNS address. Once they have that, it’ll be easier for them to see what you are researching, where you are located, if you use GPS features, and possibly even see you if they can turn on the camera on your device. Far fetched? Don’t forget a few weeks ago there was a big up roar in the news when a school that allowed students to borrow laptop computers was spying on the kids by activating the laptop’s camera. If a school could do it, don’t hesitate to think that the government could too.

Let’s just pray my conspiracy theory is wrong, and if the government does store our DNS addresses, that they keep them secure and not have a computer get hacked into or lost.

You may be wondering…did I…go to the site? Of course I did. I’m not an idiot. I don’t want my devices shut down, and besides…I’ve got nothing to hide. One thing is for sure, I will be eagerly looking for statistics to be published at the end of the year of the estimated devices accessing the internet, including how many phones are in use in 2012.

Stay safe out there, and remember, keep your cameras pointed in a safe direction.

UPDATE 07-25-2012 Amazingly, the magic date comes and goes and instead of hearing thousands of complaints about people’s computer systems not being able to access the internet after the deadline, there are none. So, did the government over-estimate how many computers had truly been infected, or was this truly a ruse to simply get everyone to log in their internet accessible device to the government’s database?

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