WE LIVE in the twenty first century where everything is technologically advanced. Your cell phone can now be your computer. You can check and send emails, and surf the internet, right from your cell phone― which can also be your Global Positioning System (GPS) for directions. It is also your television and you can watch videos, take pictures, make a phone call. It’s your all-in-one gadget. Amazing!
The very first computer was made in the mid-1940s. It was the size of a room. Can you imagine that? Fast forward to the twenty first century, the computer can now fit in the palm of your hand. You can have a computer the same size as a legal envelope. A variety of computers exist: from the traditional PC, the note book, to the laptop ― all with varied and complex abilities. They all have internet access capability. You just click an icon and you are linked to the world; through the World Wide Web.
The world loves the internet. We have seen a proliferation of many social networking websites online. The world has become a gigantic global village and finding lost friends is easy. You just go to Myspace, Facebook or Hi5― all social networking websites. You can make friends and start new relationships with people you have never met.
Online dating has become a revolutionary phenomenon, replacing and threatening the traditional relationship. Who needs the ordinary library hook up or their friend to ‘hook them up’ with one of their friends? Just go to E-harmony, Match.com, and Yahoo Personals, etc and you will meet the partner of your dreams, so to speak. You can make the whole experience interesting with video chatting, in real time.
All you do is post your profile online, with your pictures and personal information. You can take pictures with your cell phone and they automatically are saved on the network server for you to view online. You can share anything from a picture to a video on Youtube― a video-sharing site. You can go shopping online, bank online, and watch and pay your bills online. Your whole life can be online.
That is today’s power of technology.
However, do you pause for a minute to think who else may be looking at your personal information, profiles, and some of those crazy pictures you posted online or took with your cell phones? Do you worry about your security, as an individual?
Statistics show that nine out of ten people between the ages of twelve and sixty four post their profile on Myspace or Facebook and share it with friends and family. Thirty percent of profiles posted online belong to underage minors, who are susceptible to online child molesters. This is a shocking statistic, by any standards. Child molesters use the internet to form relationships with minors who end up abducted or even murdered.
Parents know that their children have access to the internet; but they don’t know who they are networking with. Many of them just block access to pornographic sites.
Of the seventy percent of people with personal profiles online, fifty percent of them are between the ages of eighteen and forty. They share pictures, videos, stories and diaries. Their circle of friends keeps growing.
A study done by an internet company showed that most people, who have social circles online, only know twenty of the friends they have in their circle. The rest are friends of friends of friends. So you can have a hundred friends in your circle and you only know twenty of them, the rest are complete strangers. The eighty complete strangers have their own circle of friends, which includes people they also don’t know. The shocking reality is that anyone can have access to your profile because they are in your “friends” circle.
The story gets even more interesting. Within your circle of friends, there are people who are looking for easy internet targets they can use for unscrupulous means. Anyone can ‘Photoshop’ your picture ― that is modify it, and post it on a racist, terrorist or pornographic website, in a matter of seconds. Anyone, from your future employer to your family, can find your profile or picture on some distasteful website that you had no clue even existed.
Research shows that sixty percent of employers look up candidates for employment online before they make a job offer. That page on Myspace or Facebook, or worse still, the one you have no knowledge of, can actually paint an image of who you are to the prospective employer. An interesting case recently happened in the United States. A city mayor lost her job because of a picture she posted on her Myspace page wearing a swimsuit.
Criminals now use the internet to find and target victims. They use the internet to look up private details including your home address, phone number; etc. Private lives are no longer private once you go online. Stalkers use the internet to track their targets. Criminals find it easy to pinpoint their targets. For those who shop, bank, pay and store information online, there is a high risk of identity theft.
Those people who store information online including bank account numbers and passwords are easy targets for hackers. Hackers can hack your computer from a remote location and steal your personal information. They can ‘clean up’ every cent in your bank account, go on a shopping spree with your credit cards, ruin your credit file or simply delete all the files on your computer. People have bought homes, cars etc while using identities stolen online.
The internet is a portal for education, information, entertainment and communication around the world. These can all be blissful experiences ― very useful to us. Unfortunately, the internet also attracts the ‘wrong crowd’ ― identity thieves, child molesters, criminals of all sorts and hateful and spiteful people.
Next time you come across a website, think before you click. Think before you post your profile online. What you put online stays online forever and everyone has got access to your profile. People can manipulate what you have posted online. The internet can easily become your number one enemy.
The bottom line is anything you post online can come back to haunt you, harm you or can help you. You know the saying, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas”. Well, in this case, what is put on the web stays on the web.
So think before you click.
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