Why The Internet Scares Me
I’ll admit it – the Internet scares me. But not in the way it scares other people.
Most other people afraid of the Internet are afraid for one of the following reasons:
- It’s new and unfamiliar (where’s the send button again??)
- There is too much violence, pornography, etc.
- Big Brother is spying on me
- Hackers are stealing my information as we speak
None of that scares me. In fact, I believe with the right parenting, my kids will grow up to be “Internet experts” and be able to avoid the Internet slums, sidestep Phishing schemes, and find the truth among the millions of splogs.
Nope, none of that scares me. The people behind the Internet scare me.
And I’m not talking about the tinfoil hat wearers who claim that there’s a secret society of rich oil tycoons who run the Internet only to spy and steal from you. I’m not even talking about the ISPs who throttle your bandwidth and refuse to let you use Bittorrent or even stream IP TV at an acceptable speed.
I’m talking about the normal people behind personal websites, blogs, Usenet groups, and forums. These are scary people. They’re scary for a number of reasons:
1. The Internet feeds their anonymity – If nobody has to see your face, or even know who you are, you’re more likely to say things you wouldn’t normally say. Your local forum member battlestargalacticafreak can say whatever he wants online because he’s sitting at home safe and sound in his Lazy-Boy eating a hot pocket. If you don’t like what he has to say you can send a nasty email, but in the end he doesn’t care because you don’t know who he is, where he lives, and can never do anything about it. This power of anonymity makes people inconsiderate, rude, mean, and scary – when they might normally be very nice people. battlestargalacticafreak might even be the nice 15 year-old boy who mows your lawns on Saturday… but online he can throw out rude comments, profanities, or even threats and never care.
2. Your information isn’t as secure as you’d like – It’s always a little unnerving to receive an email with the subject “WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE NOW!” I made a decision a long time ago not to hide my identity online. When I blog or post to forums, it’s with my real name. And anyone with some decent Google skills could probably find out more information about me.
3. Law enforcement is unprepared – My favorite example of this is one of my own. After writing a blog post about a local MLM company and warning my readers about the dangers of MLMs, I began to receive threats. At first the threats were mildly funny, with mention of my mental retardation and obvious lack of intelligence. However, when the threats started to involve my life and the life of my family, I decided to get the local police involved. I presented them with printouts of the emails containing the death threats, and even provided them IP addresses of those that had written the emails and commented on the site. What did they do? Nothing.
At first I was upset that the police weren’t doing anything to help me out. But after thinking about the situation, I can’t really blame them – they’re just uneducated and unprepared to deal with Internet “crime.” We read stories every day about cyber-bullying or cyber-stalking, but those stories usually only emerge after someone has been hurt or after a physical altercation has taken place. There’s usually no action taken on the threat because “it’s just an email.” And even with the right information (like IP addresses) the Police often have no idea what to do with it. Sure, if someone really wanted to keep their identity a secret they could (enter TOR), but most people making online threats are doing so from their home computer. And a quick phone call to Comcast could provide them with a home address. The police need to be informed and trained in how to deal with Internet crimes, before they become “real crimes.” It would be interesting to see some statistics on how many “real” crimes began with online threats or other online actions.
I believe the longer you spend online the more you realize what kind of “power” the people behind the internet have. And when you begin contributing or participating in a specific niche of people, such as I do through my blogging, you begin to tap a very passionate group of users. And for some unknown reason (at least to me) their passion knows no bounds. With some twisted belief that the internet will keep them safe people believe they can say whatever they want without recourse, and without a thought as to what that does to actual people.
I believe it was Dvorak (John C. that is) who told a story about a rude commenter on his blog. The person had written some rude or nasty comments with the belief that nobody would do anything. However, John sent a quick email to the person introducing himself and asking him why he was so rude… and the person’s tone changed completely. He was so surprised that John had called him on his rude behavior that he was immediately apologetic and took back everything he had said.
After hearing that story I often wonder what would happen if I tracked down all the people who track me down and showed up at their door and explained to their mom that their 27 year-old son living in the basement spent all day saying things he wouldn’t ever say to another person face to face. Hmmm…
