Assignment 2

With the dawn of the internet, it has allowed everyone from all over the world to be connected in some way, shape, or form within seconds. Although it is a great tool for information searches and talking to other people across town, across the country, across the world and even people in online games. However, some people take advantage of this and exploit it to their own benefits. This website that I found is a perfect example of what can be accomplished just by typing some words into Google, it is a website on how to be a hacker.
The internet is a dangerous place, probably more dangerous than walking down the streets in this very city. There are tons of websites that people freely put their information into to purchase things from places like Dell.com, Amazon.com, and ebay. We assume that these sites are safe enough to give our info to, but how can we be sure. If we assume that those sites are safe what is to say that a phishing scam that is disguised like an Amazon.com letter will go undetected. I play an online game called World of Warcraft. Now I know of people online whose accounts get hacked and it seems to be a fairly common practice. They are disguised as links from websites that are commonly know on the forums. Some people spend a lot of time acquiring their items in the game and to log in one day and see all your stuff just gone is a crappy feeling. Obviously this is nothing in comparison to someone’s identity being stolen, but it is just an example of what kind of stuff goes on. Do we have any idea how easy it is for our identity to be stolen online? No, we trust our info to these sources that we don’t see in person nor could we walk into, yet we trust them with practically our lives. Lives are ruined everyday because someone’s information can be stolen and they then proceed to trash their credit history. Bye bye low interest rates.
Even more disturbing about this internet are the pedophiles out there that attract kids. These people are the scum of the earth, yet they are able to abduct these kids and get them to meet them in person. It is scary that you have no idea who you are talking to online. I read an article about this older man ruin his life because of an online “relationship” that he thought he was having with this teenage girl. The man pretended to be his “son”, himself like 20 + years prior. This girl that he had “met” online told him that she had begun to talk to someone else online. Turns out the older man worked with this younger kid and got so mad at him for “stealing” his love away that he killed him. Mind you that this guy is married with kids and his wife left him and he went to jail for murder. The best part about this story is that the young girl was not so young after all; she was a mother pretending to be her real daughter. The mother being the same age as the older man. You cannot trust people you meet on the internet. This story was really disturbing when I had read it.
We are unable to tell what is safe and what is not safe, just look at TJX, online. There are ways that we can protect ourselves on the internet that are just the same rules when we were kids, don’t talk to strangers and don’t get into cars with strangers. It is not always that simple, but the in some sense it is. The internet is just full of people who are out to get you and if we don’t watch out, they will get you next.