Internet Safety

 Introduction
The internet has been a huge innovation of the last century. Nowadays people are using it for several purposes such as for communication, information research, entertainment and the purchase of goods and services. Besides offering new opportunities, the internet provided as well a variety of issues. In the following abstracts we will discuss both advantages and disadvantages of the internet which will lead us finally to some suggestions that we think could provide solutions for the arising problems.
1. Communication
First of all, the internet provides the opportunity for people to communicate all around the world and thereby establishing a global network of friendships via social networks such as Facebook, msn, Skype and so on. It offers a new, uncomplicated and fast way to communicate with each other, which is an advantage in modern job interviews via Skype or job applications sent by e-mail. As we as Erasmus students currently experiencing, it enables us to write, speak and even see our friends and families even if we are in a foreign country.
On the other hand, several concerns arose related to communicating over the internet.
Cyber Bullying is one of them. It refers to the harassment and threatening of other persons through using information technology for example in chat rooms, e-mails etc. It is especially dangerous because parents and friends cannot interfere as they do not have access to the victims’ account, and therefore might not even recognise that their child or friend is bullied. Furthermore, the person bullying the victim cannot be identified easily because the internet provides anonymity. Cyber bullying can threaten the victim by somebody else uploading a photo, setting the victim in a wrong light, making the photo available to others to watch and comment it and thereby might create a bad reputation as well as make the harassed person lose self esteem. A possible solution could be to enforce the control of forum administrators to remove comments or pictures that do not conform to the stated terms and conditions.
Secondly the concern about data storage creates a feeling of losing privacy especially on Facebook personal information is used for commercial purposes for example personalised advertisement. In addition it makes people feel spied on as they can never be sure if a third party is reading their personal messages or listening to and recording conversations. As Facebook and Google are two major players and are very powerful it is very difficult to address the concern of data storage.
Furthermore, people who have mental illnesses are misusing the possibility of anonymous communication with the help of the internet and meet on forums. For example in the forum of “Pro-Ana”, skinny girls are meeting to help each other to reduce their weight even more. As a result their illness becomes even more serious and they finally lose the sense of the reality and do not realise anymore that they are different. As it is anonymous, it is difficult to track and to provide medical help. A further example is that of people planning their suicide collectively on special forums. The only solution that comes to our minds for this concern is simply to ban those respective websites and forums. Controversially, this could create a concern of restricting the freedom of expression and opinion and it is not guaranteed that they will not find other ways to meet and communicate with each other.
Viruses are another concern when communicating over the internet. They can affect the whole system of your computer and can destroy or spy all personal information contained. It is threatening because the only way to protect themselves against it is by using antivirus programmes and acting carefully.
2. Information
The internet is a huge source of free information. You can find almost every kind of information about merely every subject. It is even possible to read newspapers from all over the world online. The information can be accessed very easily as well as fast which is why most of the research, students do nowadays, is committed electronically and online rather than using classical, non electronic libraries.
Even though it is useful and convenient, oftentimes disputes and uncertainties about the reliability and accuracy of the source arise. Some sources cause confusion about if they provide the right information without any modification. Additionally, concerns about the objectivity and transparency of the source occur. In some sources you may not be able to find out if it was written as a personal opinion or objectively and you might not even find information about where it comes from, the place and time of publication as well as the author’s name. Some sources reproduced other authors’ words without referencing them whereby you as a final user of the source commit plagiarism as well.
The only way to protect against these threats is to reassure about the above points and only using sources from the internet that are reliable.
3. Entertainment
The internet creates new possibilities for the people to entertain. Online games provide the opportunity to play with other persons from all over the world who share one common interest and thereby establish worldwide friendships. Moreover it supplies the people with a huge, diversified music source which cannot be extracted from a local radio station. Such sources are for example youtube.com, i-tunes and online radio stations etc. This creates a good way of listening to free music and downloading single songs is less expensive than buying a whole CD in a shop. For bands it gives them a chance to gain popularity more easily as they can upload their songs on several pages such as myspace and soundcloud without the need for a record label.
Again, the safety of one’s intellectual property for example of bands uploading their music is questionable as other persons can easily use their ideas. Illegal downloads create a huge financial loss for the music and film industry as less CD’s and legal downloads are sold. A possible solution to prevent and reduce illegal downloading is to introduce and reinforce laws as well as penalties. Game addiction is another serious topic caused by the new entertainment possibilities the internet offers. Especially for young people, who spend the whole day in front of their screen it is dangerous, as they lose completely the sense of time and reality as well as money when it comes to gambling. A potential approach to control this issue is to ask for the identity card number when entering an online game or gambling session to prevent people younger than 18 to become addicted. This on the other side could again raise the question of privacy issues in the internet.
4. Services and E-Commerce
Nowadays, we have the opportunity to buy almost everything on the internet, from tickets for cinema or flights over books to clothes and household goods. This makes the daily life a lot easier. Online banking can be done easily and quickly even from a foreign country, people are enabled to carry out transactions in their home countries. Furthermore, you can sell things on your own for example on e-bay.
However, several drawbacks are related to e-commerce and buying services online. Firstly, you cannot see or touch the product, you order before purchasing it. People are less likely to go in their town based shopping centres which makes the economy in their regions suffer from it and besides the “flair of shopping” is lowered. The most pressing issue is the theft of personal information, also called identity theft. It will always be the fear of your personal details, name, address and credit card number being spied by hackers misusing them.