The Internet, is it accessible?

I've been around the internet for a few years, I've always had a decent grasp of the do' and don'ts. I've never had a virus, worm, trojan or spyware of any kind infiltrate my machine. Of course I get spam, popups and the obligatory emails from African business men requesting help with their finances but generally I wade through the internet's sewerage quite happily on a daily basis.

I fear many do not. I visited my parents last week to find señora forjador was persistently contacting them in search of an English boy via Net Send. I found my dad signing up for quaterly anti-virus updates but not understanding that the av software was checking his incoming and outgoing email.

He gets spooked by popups disguised as error messages, as I'm sure many non-web savvy people do. They don't have the instinct or know how to get rid of chromeless popups. Should there be night classes on popups, spyware, diallers, hackers, forums&flaming?

The internet is a quagmire of deceit, trip wires and scum. I've talked about sensorship and some of the murkier aspects of the internet in another thread, I'd go so far as to say the internet is vastly overcroweded by two things; porn and scheming; the 'net's a new vehicle for begging, pyramid schemes and all manner of thievery.

Even online stores are at it; a man in the pub says "oh, you can start up from home, with nothing on the internet" and they do, the place is full of products minus aftersales or support.

All the time people strive to make the internet better, they build better sites, more accessible, better looking, and all the time there are a hundred times more people working on seedy plots to make money.

There's alot about the internet that understandably scares regular people from using it. For the most part the internet is a huge web of lies and deceit intent on ensnaring the very people who aren't confident in using it.

This is just my view. I see what the net could be and what it is.

I'd like online gaming to take off without the script kiddie |337 h4x0r aspect.
Ecommerce to be of minimal risk to the consumer.
I'd like porn and other material beyond taste and decency to go to .sex/.xxx tld's and stay there.
I'd like laws imposed against the likes of Gain, preventing software producers carrying such spyware along with their product.
I'd like ISP's to activly prevent spam, I get the same spam I was getting 4-5 years ago, nothing changes.

Maybe I ask too much? It just seems to me that the internet is young and learning bad habits all the time, it's grown up without a firm hand for guidance and unless something is done, will never reach the people who could really benefit from its potential.

As you can maybe tell, I'm for an 'internet police' even sensorship of sorts, but moreso countries need to adjust laws to this networking age.

That's all, thanks. ;)

There is so much that an experienced computer user takes for granted while surfing the net. What emails too delete and not open, what emails too filter out all together, what attachments (if any) too download and open, what windows are pop-ups (and how too ctrl-tab/alt-f4 them with minimum casualties too bye-stander browser pages). Installing, and using antivirus and firewall software, not opening that god dam awful rubbish from Gater (or similar evil spyware).

It can be very worrying when you do come across someone who is not aware off these things. I have sorted computers for people before who’s hard drives have been totally full of virus's, Trojans and spyware (from email attachments, dialers, crappy software ect ect). Email inboxes flooded with spam, and outboxes full off replies too junk email (my brother still does not understand how replying too junk mailers and telling them too take a hike is not the best idea in the world). I recently found a Trojan on my dad’s machine, and this was with NAV2002 installed. I can but assume that he got confused and annoyed at all the blinking, flashing messages, and just closed the program down.

I think the problem with the bad things on the internet is not necessarily the fact that there are so many people involved, but that it’s so easy too do, and that they (obviously) are still making money in the process. Junk emailing would die out very quickly if people just stopped reading, replying and taking any notice of such emails in their inbox. But that is not going too happen anytime soon. Like you said, there just MUST be ways of stopping these things. There must be better ways for IPS's and email providers too kill off junk mail, but you look at services like hotmail, read some horror stories (http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,57132,00.html) about there latest blunders (and the fact that all this junk mail fills up inboxes pretty quick, getting people too upgrade there accounts) and then think that maybe the education route might be quicker. Although there is no ‘educational’ approach too the bad things that happen in gaming, there must be a way of making games/game servers a lot better at protecting against hackers and the script kiddies. Unfortunately, as long as there are ways too cheat, many people will get falsely accused of it. And I wonder how long it is before some laws come into force against the absurdity of some of the spyware that’s about today? As for the porn, it’s been around for quite sometime before the net, and I think it will probably be around for as long, if not longer than it. Also, I am not sure ware I stand on your ideas here, where do you draw the line between sites that do and don’t belong under .sex/.xxx tld's?

I agree wholeheartedly that the internet does have such huge potential, which is totally not being realized. I wonder if the problems that your thread highlighted will increase over the next few years or not?

I also wonder - what would the net would be like if the 10000 worst hackers, crackers, junk mailers, spammers and trolls would disappear off the face of the earth?

In my honest opinion I believe when a secure, mass market, desktop PC Operating System comes around the internet will get a whole lot easier for a general user.
This does not eliminate the problem of spam, but it will mean that their are less open relay's, fewer mass mailer trojans prolific, and a much less network intensive internet.

I think I read 20% (don't always believe the stats) of all email is now un-solicited, commercial spam. Thats gotta be a large amount of network usage.
Still spam will exist but it won't make it so easy,

i am on my own mission to fight spam, or at least to get my email listed by compainies on the never ever to spam list. trust me if they spam me they are in a big whole.
I have a policy on spam.


scroots

Mouse I hear where you are coming from. I sell and repair computers as a side business to generate a few extra bucks with a friend. And we got called out to this lady's house to take a look at the computer we sold her back in September and when we got there her Windows 2000 had multiple problems, random lockups and etc.

And as a side note when we built the computer, she gave us her old one with Win98 on it to transfer the files over and it at that time was badly damaged and crashed lots. When I fired it up to transfer the files over the kernel totally died. So we plugged the HD into the new comp and Anti-Virus picked up tons and tons of viruses.

So anyways, I ran this program Spyware Search & Destroy and it found tons of spyware on the computer. She isn't exactly a expert user so she probably always said "yes" to those security dialogs that you get if you get a Gator pop-up (or other spyware type things) telling you to install their crap. I think browsers are also at fault, they need to be more aware of spyware and those security dialogs in peticular. There should be a way to shut them off so it automatically denies all of them, so then less experienced users don't get loads of spyware on their computers.

I agree that there needs to be tougher regulations on spyware, hell just make the whole concept illegal. I do recall that there is a lawsuit pending or something against Gator cuz they are the ones that put out those banner ads and pop-ups that look like windows dialogs.

ISPs and other mail providers need to take a more active role is anti-spam work. If spam never gets through, there wouldn't be a point to keep sending it out so it would all stop, right? Of course as soon as someone develops a new method to stop spam, there is always someone that is working to get around it.

That is my line of thinking on this. I'm sure I'll have more to say later.

You might find this of interest.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/909754.asp?0dm=L13NT

OK, reading that website not only makes me laugh that someone wants to do that kind of stuff but makes me more upset that they are trying to get paid for makeing people like me upset with such popups and javascripts running in the background. Isn't it against the law to mess with our personal property without our direct concent and if it is, why is this guy looking for a patenet on changing my registry? other then trying to make a few bucks and piss me off some more...?


Jason

Hey mouse - i saw this (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=1212&e=2&u=/ap/20030508/ap_on_hi_te/earthlink_spam_suit&sid=95573501), and thought of you....