ARTICLE CRITIQUE SAMPLE

Article critique of Superfish and TLS case

Introduction

With the increase in the use of technology, there are emerging issues such as cybercrime which have attracted attention of many people especially the consumers. It is presumed that the companies offering the internet services observe the highest ethical standards by protecting the privacy of the consumer (Broadhurst, 2006); unfortunately it seems they no longer consider this as their obligations. The aim of this paper is to provide a critical analysis of the article; Superfish and TLS: A Case Study of Betrayed Trust and Legal Liability by Sandra Dunn. This article basically discusses how the Lenovo collaborated with other two companies, Komodia and Superfish Inc. to modify and break Transport Layer Security (TLS), an action that put the people’s private data at risk. However, this case study is an indication that there are many other unidentified companies which are benefiting online through the infringement of the people’s rights.

Supporting Points

Background

The article is based on the emerging issues in the use of technology; the privacy of the consumers. The case study considers three companies that compromised their customer’s privacy and security. The author has provided a good background of the three companies and it has shown how they came into the agreement. Lenovo installed the Superfish software so that it could improve the profit margin on their laptops and this served as an income opportunity for the company. Superfish came in in order to improve the Lenovo users browsing experience by offering user pop ads which were similar to the images they could be looking for. Lastly, Komodia served as a middle-man between the client and the server when browsing. It intercepted the encrypted communication; this broke the TLS hence it was unable for the people to exchange secrets safely. The background of this article gives the reader a good understanding of the whole case even without reading the whole article. As Winston & Goldberg (2004) suggests, background gives the reader the sense of reading the article and owing to the situation discussed it influences him psychologically to read the rest of the article.

Purpose

The article is well timed and it came at the right time when cybercrime is a critical issue to consider. The article servers as an eye opener to the consumers and it raise awareness to them on the emerging online insecurity issues. I agree with the author when he notes that Komodia was irresponsible, dangerous, and negligent and this led to the breakage and validation controls for the TLS web communication. The article shows that consumers are no longer safe and they should be careful when browsing.

Organization

According to McMillan & Schumacher (2014), the organization gives the flow of ideas which makes it easy for the reader to understand. The article is well organized and this gives the reader an easy time and it makes him to comprehend the content faster. For instance, the author starts with the abstract which summarizes the article, then introduction which gives a general overview of what the article would discuss. Then the body is divided into various sections such as; the Superfish event, Lenovo, Superfish Inc., Komodia. Then then next section includes the victims and their reactions; the swarm, wronged individuals, security researchers/experts, consumer protection groups, attorneys. The article then discusses how the company addressed the swarm (complainants), and then the conclusion.

Critiques

Lack of enough statistical evidence

Nevertheless, there are some concerns that can be noted from the article. For instance the author has not used enough statistical evidence to show the affected people. He just gave the figure of the Superfish swarm which reached 75,328,719 in 16 days. This number represented those who went into the social media to complain. This number may not represent the actual figure of the affected because among them they could be ordinary people who did not even known what was going on by they decided to comment on the case, also there are other people who might have been affected but they are not on social media. The author could have given the actual number of the affected wronged individuals but it could not depend on the social media to estimate the complainants. Additionally, the article also indicated the financial impacts of Lenovo but did not show the impacts of the Superfish Inc. and Komodia using figures. According to Johnson (2013), statistics give the writer chance to convince the readers and enables them to draw conclusions and argue their points without giving the reader any room of doubts.

Underemphasized Sections

The aim of the case study is to show how the three companies violated the ethical rules and the privacy rights for the consumers. The reader would have therefore expected to see discussion of several cases that the companies had been convicted for. For instance in “the legal case against Lenovo and Superfish Inc.” section, the author notes that Lenovo was charged for violating twelve laws. It would have been significant for the author to show how the company violated each of these laws. The only case discussed in details was the “Case 3:15-cv-00368-

CAB-RBB Document 1 Filed 02/19/15” under the wronged individuals section. The author would have at least given a summary of how Lenovo violated the said laws. Due to this, they just remain allegations because the author has not shown any evidence and the benefit of doubt goes to the convicted company.

Insufficient Recommendations

In case study like this, it should serve as a platform to educate the consumers on how they should protect themselves from the cyber-criminals. Although at the end of the article the author notes that Superfish provides important lessons for both the hardware and the software providers, it has not given ways in which consumers can improve their experience online. For instance the author should have noted aspects like; consumers should user anti-virus software, if they are in doubt of any site they should exit, they should ignore the pop-ups which in most cases, like the Superfish pop-ups, contain malicious software which can trick the user into installing malware. These would have improved on the purpose of the article to the internet consumers.

Conclusion

The structure and the organization of an article are essential as they determine significance of the article to the reader. It determines how easy the reader reads the article and how easy is it for him to comprehend the content. Sandra Dunn has however organized the article well and the content is useful to the reader due to the emerging cyber-crimes. However, Dunn would have added value to the article by using more statistical figures to add on the evidence, more details on the twelve alleged violations and he would have added on the recommendations so that the reader would be more careful when browsing.

Reference

McMillan, J. H., & Schumacher, S. (2014). Research in education: Evidence-based inquiry. Pearson Higher Ed.

Broadhurst, R. (2006). Developments in the global law enforcement of cyber-crime. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, 29(3), 408-433.

Johnson, V. E. (2013). Revised standards for statistical evidence. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(48), 19313-19317.

Winston, W. L., & Goldberg, J. B. (2004). Operations research: applications and algorithms (Vol. 3). Boston: Duxbury press.