In the U.S., we enjoy a great amount of freedom and many social rights. Privacy is one of those, and arguably the most important. Our Internet is completely uncensored and our government has no notions or plans to change that. We can surf what we want, when we want, and people have almost taken this for granted. Many other countries are not this way. For example, Iran is very censored, and around certain times, it gets worse. As the last election drew to a close, the government in Iran blocked Twitter and other instant messaging services were shut down so as to not give protestors a medium to communicate their message. In China, people always make jokes about the “Great Firewall of China”. It didn’t earn this nickname for no reason though, Chinese citizens are blocked from pretty much any site that has anything anti-communist or any content that might go against their ideologies.

Although out Internet is as free as red, white, and blue can be, freedom can bring about some bad things. Criminals and identity thieves roam the Internet; hackers and trackers prey on innocents. As technology increases, these criminals up their arsenal and still have some tricks up their sleeve. Some people may feel comforted by the security systems and firewalls installed on their computer, but this is just the same as a child hiding under the covers; what are the covers actually going to do?

These preliminary defenses are a piece of cake for a hacker of even the most rudimentary talent. The truth is, even if these defenses worked, they still wouldn’t fix the main problem: the IP address. This virtual nametag your computer wears is shown to every website, and contains your location. If someone got your IP address, all they would have to do is copy it into a Google search, and they would have your location.

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Many computers nowadays come with a lot of extras. In a world where every computer is lightening fast, these computer manufacturers have to have some reason to manufacture these more expensive models, and the people to shell out their hard earned money for them. Many say they have increased browsing speeds, free games, or other stuff, but the biggest draw these days is a built in “webcam.” This little device does as its name suggests, it is a camera that allows you to communicate on a face-to-face basis over the Internet. It is one thing to speak to a potential customer over the phone, but a business man who has something to sell has to show more than pictures to his or her client to convince them to buy. Through the web cam, the business man could show a customer how a product works, and see their reactions, and probably have a much better shot at making the sale.

While these web cams can be used for business related purposes as stated above, they can be purely social as well, and in this respect, they shine. People can, instead of simply typing out a smiley face emoticon, can smile and laugh and hear their friends or family’s voice. Imagine the joy a soldier feels when he is able to hear his family’s voice again; imagine the joy they all would feel if they could see each other again. Some couple are known to chat over dinner over the Internet when they are apart. An Internet program called Skype actually allows people to organize these chats with a phone number like system and chat and talk and see each other over the Internet. Many people use these to record their musical performances, their political rants, or just their random antics and upload them straight to the online video giant YouTube. The possibilities are endless; perhaps online classes will be enhanced to actually have a teacher lecture to students while they take notes.

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Identity theft is a huge problem nowadays. It really is a testament to the changing of the times; people back in the fifties would have seen identity theft and becoming someone else as a crazy science experiment gone wrong. Perhaps it is, but that doesn’t change the fact it is a risk everyone runs on the Internet today. The problem is, you put out so much confidential information every time you log onto your computer. You can be sure someone is seeing this and it is being recorded somewhere.

The next big problem is that this information is pretty much accessible to anybody. It may not be in a convenient button that says “information here” but it certainly doesn’t take an N.S.A. agent to install a deep packet inspector and steal some of your data. People travel around the Internet blissfully unaware and overall, quite unprotected. The security systems they do have were the ones installed (probably improperly) on their system when they bought it, if they even bothered to do so at all.

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