When I was in elementary school, I thought girls could give me some dreadful disease. I stayed away from girls because they gave me “cooties”. After school, I would go fishing at a nearby stream, ride my skate board, or study only if mandated by my parents. The closest I came to technology was watching the “Little Rascals” on TV. Today, computers and the Internet offers a cyberspace playground for kids. Kids stay up past their bed time playing with their computer or surfing the Internet.
The Internet provides entertainment and education for millions of people worldwide. The Internet will have the most dramatic effect on mankind since the industrial revolution. Through the Internet, people can send electronic mail, exchange files, and publish through the world-wide web (WWW), materials that traditionally appeared in journals, magazines, posters, books, television, and film. Information can be searched globally and retrieved in a matter of seconds by the use of Internet “search engines”.
Every technological advancement of mankind …
Free Essays on Internet Security
Internet Security
Internet insecurity is a sufficient cause of distrust in the medium. A lack of faith in it as a viable marketplace due to this insecurity stems from three reasons. People are skeptical due to the already publicized cases of security breeches. Whether in movies, television, or magazines, many have recently become very aware of the possible danger that they face. Users and non-users may also fear that the Internet could have a “big brother” effect. With the abundance of information on the Internet, some feel that it has too much control, and that users sacrifice their privacy. Finally, the fact that the amount of protection is limited is another problem. One cannot feel confident in a situation if they do not know how to protect themselves. There are ways to keep safe on the Internet, but few are very well known. Some programs have no simple way to protect against at all. If people maintain a feeling of insecurity it is quite possible that the Internet could be lost. As Marshal Jon Fisher, a reporter for The Atlantic Monthly, wrote, ” …if a shopping mall has a reputation as a pickpockets’ hangout, it becomes a ghost mall.” (Fisher 1)
There are many examples of security “hackers” and criminal activity. Many offers on the Internet to download anything from software to pornography use a technology called a “Trojan horse”. The purpose of this program is to carry out its stated function while secretly carrying out another. Internet delinquents may use this to record names and passwords when a user logs in to an electronic account and then pass this information to others that may read the users e-mail, draw on their checking account, or gain access to some other private area. (Fisher 1) Other examples include that of a list of Internet auction sites that through a lack of security, left very private information available to the public. In the case of one site, names, phone numbers, postal addresses, and passwords were displayed to anyone that just clicked on the right site. (Kornblum 1) The worst part of this breech of security is it required no exceptional Internet knowledge at all. Only luck. The problem unfortunately, has not been blamed on the sites or the software used, but on the Web servers. This is stated plainly by OpenSite CEO Michael Brader-Araje in saying that, “This is the consequence of an inexperienced Web server administrator.