Internet Concerns & Issues
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I trust what I see on the Internet?
Should the Internet be regulated?
What can be done to protect children?
Is the Internet resilient?
Can other people read my email?
Can I send email anonymously?
Is it safe to give my credit card details?
Can I pay for things over the Internet?
Can I catch a computer virus from the Internet?
Can I trust what I see on the Internet?
In general, information found on the Internet is as reliable as information
anywhere - it depends on the credibility of the organisation providing it.
But because of the nature of the Internet, where anyone can publish what
they want and no-one validates it, much of the material tends be quite subjective
and sometimes wrong. Unless you come across a site which is deliberately
trying to pretend it is written by someone else, the concern might be that
the information, even from a credible provider, is up-to-date and of a reasonable
quality.
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Should the Internet be regulated?
The Internet's "content" cannot be regulated in the way that the
editorial content of a TV station might be, material posted on the Internet
cannot be regulated in an editorial sense any more than the content of a
phone call - it has to be dealt with through the law and the courts. Most
undesirable traffic, e.g. child pornography and other criminal or antisocial
uses, is already illegal.
This content can be dealt with by a combination of appropriate anti-crime
measures coupled with well-orchestrated market responses - for example voluntary
codes of conduct policed by trade and industry associations who award complying
suppliers with "safe to use" badging. Service providers are developing
rules of conduct for different sectors. A subscriber who breaks the rules
of a particular service can have his or her subscription cancelled. Market
forces may determine what is "desirable" or otherwise to particular
sectors of the community, since a service that provides or freely allows
"undesirable" content or conduct will have fewer subscribers than
one that offers the most widely acceptable mix.
The Internet Watch Foundation has set up a hotline and is implementing
proposals agreed by the police, the government, and the two major UK service
provider trade associations, ISPA and LINX. Safety-Net
(http://www.ispa.org.uk/safetynet.shtml) addresses rating, reportingand
responsibility for Child Pornography & Illegal Material on the Internet
See also the Campaign Against Censorship
of the Internet in Britain (http://babylon.ivision.co.uk/)
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What can done to protect children?
Access by children (or other vulnerable persons) to so-called "adult"
or other materials that the child's "responsible adults" might
not wish the child to see can be achieved by other means, leaving the child
with unconstrained access to the Internet as an important part of their
learning,
Although some say that children should only have access under supervision,
this may be impractical in many homes and even in some schools. There are
two ways that this could be implemented.
- Children could only have access to certain types of Internet accounts
which restrict the websites, discussion lists and newsgroups made available.
- Use of local software on the PC that detects inappropriate sites and
closes the link when these are detected.
We need both more discussion and more technology before deciding the best
way to handle this, meanwhile the onus is on responsible adults to manage
the problem in the way of their choice, as is the case with childrens' access
to "undesirable" television programmes.
There are a number of products which attempt to control what information
may be accessed, although if you want to have tight control on what's available
on your computer, your strategy will probably use more than one of these
devices
- The PICS (http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/PICS/)
(Platform for Internet Content Selection) system relies on web page publishers
to flag their pages according to a certain code. This means that service
providers, local area networks or a users PC can be configured to avoid
certain URLs. It doesn't work with email.
- The Recreational Software
Advisory Council (http://www.rsac.org/ratingsv01.html) is a badging
system for sites and pages, where the browser (in this case Microsoft Explorer)
is set up to deny access to pages labelled "adult"
- Net Nanny (http://www.netnanny.com/netnanny/)
is a software program that allows you to monitor, screen and block access
to anything residing on, or running in, out or through your PC, online or
off by screening out user defined sites, 'Words', 'Phrases', and content
that you have determined is inappropriate.
- CYBERsitter (http://www.solidoak.com/cysitter.htm),
Cyber Patrol (http://www.microsys.com/cyber/cp_order.htm)
and SurfWatch (http://www.surfwatch.com/)
all come with a list of sites and newsgroups which are deemed undesirable
and allows you to add new ones. Updated lists are available by subscription.
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Is the Internet resilient?
If an organisation takes on the use of the Internet then it will become,
to an extent, economically and socially dependent on the reliability of
services.
The Internet may be inaccessible either due to a loss of telephone communications
or through technical problems at the service provider end, or, in the very
competitive area of service provision,
service providers may be working in a financially unstable state and simply
fold.
A simple (but not yet available) solution is an industry managed "safety
net" approach, where arrangements are put in place for customers of
a failing service provider to be switched gracefully to another service
provider. Service providers would have to subscribe to a mutual fund to
cover the costs of such provisions.
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Can other people read my email?
Yes, but it is unlikely to happen. Your service system administrator could
read your mail, but probably has codes of conduct which forbids them doing
this. Someone with enough technical knowledge could intercept messages on
the Internet, unless the messages are encrypted, but it's not likely that
they'll come across your message.
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Can I send email anonymously?
Yes. To do this you'll need an anonymous remailer. The most common of these
(anon.penet.fi) has been closed down
due to legal problems in Finland, but there are other still around (see
Yahoo).
The Samaritans
reply to encrypted or anonymous emails.
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Is it safe to give my credit card details?
Not entirely (see Can other people read my email?),
but it is no more dangerous than giving your number over the phone to a
credit card hotline, or in a shop where someone could write down your details.
Ask yourself whether you trust the company you are sending the information
to, and remember that it works the other way too; they don't have your signature
to check you're not sending incorrect details.
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Can I pay for things over the Internet?
Other than using your credit card, not yet, although Netscape are the first
with secure HTTP (you can see the key symbol on the bottom of the web browser
screen). Digital cash, where clicking what you want to buy automatically
transfers money form your bank account, is also being developed.
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Can I catch a computer virus from the Internet?
If you transfer a file to your computer, then yes, it's possible that you
could be hit by a virus. This might be a web page or a file from an ftp
site. It's best to ftp from reputable ftp servers, and to use virus checking
software regularly.
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