“Clickjacking” enters popular lexicon

Traditionally, dictionaries have been slow to pick up on the newest words in a language. Given the costs associated with research, printing, and marketing, it’s no wonder that  dictionary publishers want to make sure a word has real merit. Otherwise, they would end up printing a lot of words that belong in the Urban Dictionary, not the OED. Slang would cost the industry lots of money, so editors pay close attention to which words have real impact on the language.

That’s why it’s a relatively big deal that the word “clickjacking” is getting included in recent dictionaries. This means that the word has entered the popular lexicon. A significant number of English speakers now know and use the word regularly. A few years ago, the word was predominantly used by internet security nerds. Now it belongs to us all.

That’s both good and bad news. It’s good because it means that more people are learning about the dangers of clickjacking. Ignorance is a serious danger to people surfing the web. If you don’t know what to look out for, then you’re certain to fall right into a clickjacking trap.

The bad news is that common use probably means that clickjacking is effecting more people. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the threat of clickjacking is higher than it was a few years ago, though. It could simply mean that there are more people using social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace. The actual percentage of people effected could still be the same even though the number of victims is much higher.

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Tags: clickjack, clickjacking, dictionary, likejack, likejacking, words

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