A “Genuine” Friend?

by Megan

The Internet is full of possibilities. Shopping, gambling, paying bills, and even attending an online college is an option. Another popular pastime of the Internet is social networking. People use it to reconnect with old pals and to stay in touch with friends and families. Some though, gain new friendships from people they meet on the network.

Anybody can just fill in a profile with whatever they can think of off the top of their head, and with a click of their mouse, it appears on their page for everyone to see. Who can really tell if someone is an elephant trainer or a high school student?

People have to rely on their own judgment to decide if the person at the other end is reliable or just a fraud. The sad truth is many still fall for bogus material that people create. Some can be harmless jokes or gags made up just for entertainment, others might be more dangerous. A “genuine” friend that you met over the Internet can just as well be an old sex and porn driven guy pretending to be a 16-year-old guy or girl.

Every week we hear of new cases where girls have disappeared after trying to secretly get together with guys they have met over the Internet. Most of the victims are either returned or never found. An example of a happy conclusion is of when a15-year-old girl was returned home after she had allegedly been with a man she met on MySpace.com.

MySpace, a popular fad of the younger generation, enables people to meet any of the more than 60 million members. Users can post personal details about themselves on their profile including where they live. There have been many incidents of sexual predators targeting minors that they have met through the site.

The fact of the matter is people should be more responsible with what they convey and expose to the public world of the Internet.

Dangerous People

by Jessica

The Internet is full of dangerous people. In chat rooms, my space, e-mail, instant messaging, your always talking to someone whether you know them or not, or you think you know them. For instance, someone in a chat room can tell you that their fifteen years old and live in California, when really their fifty years old and live in Oregon. Usually .they pretend to be your friend, finding out every thing about you, like where you live, how old you are, where you go to school who your friends are and where you like to hang out, which can end up being very dangerous. Also while online shopping. If you don’t enter and close out of your information properly someone, anyone, can use it to steal your money, or identity. So while putting your personal information into the Internet be careful of online predators. Not all people are bad or hazardous, you don’t need to be paranoid or overly cautious but just remember not to give out too much personal information unless you know where it’s going and who its going to, by not doing so many people have been kidnapped and even murdered. So next time you log into a chat room be cautious of what you’re doing.

The Dangers of Online Shopping

by Hannah

How many times have you bought something online? Maybe a cute pair of shoes, a present for a friend or even just something you found while surfing the web. Everyone has at least thought about buying something online. But did you actually buy it or did you rethink it while go over all the dangers in your head?

Some people don’t even think about it. They just think, no big deal, it’s just like buying something at the mall. But they’re not entirely correct. Online it’s easy for someone to take your identity. When you are forced to use some form of credit card when buying anything online, it’s like asking someone to use your credit card to buy themselves everything under the sun.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that since you have never thought about doing that, why would someone else, right? Well, hate to break it to you, but they do. Yeah, some people do weird things like that in their spare time. But you’re not making it any harder for them when you sit at home, buying stuff online, instead of driving to your nearest mall.

I’m not saying that online shopping is always bad, but it’s your own fault if someone decides to go on a shopping spree with your credit card. It’s amazing how much we use our computers and internet now; we never would have thought that someone could actually take your identity in just a few minutes. In just those few short minutes it take someone to use your credit card number as their own and start spending all the money your may, or may not have, it can end up taking you months to realize they are doing it and even long to pay it all back.

Next time while you’re debating on weather or not to buy those gorgeous boots or that present you know your friend will love, double think: Is it safe? Do I trust the web site? If you chose to buy that awesome thing you can’t possibly live without, think, am I willing to risk spending the next 50 years working to pay for someone else’s junk? If not don’t say I didn’t warn you when your credit card bill is more then you have ever had in you bank account.

Hacking into Private Documents

By LeAnne Broyles

I have decided that one of the biggest problems with the Internet to me, is Hackers. They hack into our lives using this wonderful Web. This does not seem to bother some people, but personally I don’t want anyone to use the Internet to spy on me. I mean that’s just a little creepy. Don’t you think?
Here’s the question everyone. How do they do it? How can they possibly use this shopper friendly discovery that makes all of our lives easier? That is the question I would love to have answered. It turns out there are more than a couple of ways to hack into someone’s files. That doesn’t make me want to sleep at night. I found out that you could install another program onto someone else’s computer and then use the program to edit and read all other files. This is not very comforting.
I would hope that some of the programs we have these days would keep hackers out. If not then we are all very susceptible to these annoying and problematic individuals. I may not know every thing about hackers or the Internet, but I do know that there is good and there is bad. Hopefully you don’t run into bad.

ONLINE SHOPPING

by Erik Omlid

Every year my mom buys my siblings and me a lot of Christmas presents by using the fast improving Internet. From my house in Monmouth, it takes ½ an hour to get to Salem. On the Internet, she can shop in 15 minutes and have enough presents to occupy us for an entire year.

I highly adore online shopping because I’m a person who can’t stand too many people. No affiance, but if you stuff me in a tiny shopping center with a bunch of hot a sweaty people, I’m going to get fired up about something. Shopping from the comfort of your own home makes it feel so much more relaxing than trying to beat the traffic.

I highly recommend online shopping but too much can be harmful. People can easily find out where you live. There should be a balance between the both of them. So next time you are looking for that perfect gift for one of your family, remember that you are giving away your address. Any person can check to see where you live. They can easily get onto the Internet and find out not only where you live but what kind of person you are too.

Internet Communication

by Eden

Last spring my family and I took a trip to Thailand. It took us months to prepare and I spent hours reading books and articles on the people, food, and geography. My head was filled with visions of what I was sure it was going to be like. I felt like I was swimming in the oceans and exploring the jungles weeks before I had even stepped foot on the plane. Later on I came to realize that in order for me to envision it as clearly as I did, my mind had to fill in many blanks that the books had not. When we did arrive, I found that most of the images I had come up with, though very creative, were quite inaccurate. I think that in a sense, communication over the internet can be very much the same.

When the only connection between two people ends up being typewritten words, they tend to resort to their imaginations to fill the blanks of their internet conversations. Their relationship, therefore, becomes that much less personal. According to an English proverb, “Eyes are the windows to the soul.” And whether or not that is the truth, I think it poses the question: does face to face communication differ from email, instant messaging or “MySpacing”?

One thing I investigated was the differences of my internet relationships with people I have extensive history with and people I have not known for as long. Looking at my email conversations from the last week, I received five emails from church friends, eight from school-mates, one from one of my parent’s old friends, and five spam.

As I read through the emails from the kids at my church (who I only see once a week), I noticed that the majority said something like, “Hey what’s up?” or, “are you going to be at youth group on Sunday?” While the ones from my close friends at school were much more lengthy messages complete with inside jokes and subtle sarcasm.

So, whether I am talking to my friend of five years or someone I met just a week ago, the fact remains that the way you interact with someone on the internet depends on how long you have known them.

Sock Puppeting

by Penaloza

Do you ever wonder if people are the people who claim who they say they are? I bet you hadn’t thought about that until I mentioned it. I don’t think people have created a way to confirm if they are who they claim to be. Do you really say your real age? What about your real name? Most people don’t and there is no way to prove that the person you claim to be is not real.

Have you ever seen a blog where they might post a theory and there is feedback? Did you ever think that maybe that “I definitely agree with Tom because, it makes sense,” was the writer? It’s called sock puppeting. It is when you create another account and, pretend to be somebody else to comment to other writing or postings.

Why would somebody do that? In my opinion it is because they have low self esteem issues. They don’t think there writing or advertising is good enough. If you have faith in your writing or advertising there is no need to pretend something that is not true.

With e-mail it is so easy for people to make up new accounts and pretend to be somebody else. Internet has been beneficial to all. From advertising, researching, purchasing, and many more things it also come with it’s disadvantages.

How do you know the what your purchasing in eBay works? How do you know when you pay bills online it is secure? You don’t. There is risk you must take and to protect yourself the majority claim to be somebody they are not. That includes sock puppeting. You can never trust the Internet. With many people being able to edit any writing or being able to create new websites, you can not rely every word that is posted. How do you know the information is accurate? Don’t believe everything that is on the Internet.

Online Colleges

by Victoria Williams

When I think of the Internet, I think mainly of games and chat sites. When I have an assignment, I think of word doc. There are many things you can do on the internet, such as shopping, gambling, and social networking. There are also bad things like predators, harassment, and scammers. But I’m going to talk about online colleges. How do you know the college is real? You could find out about the state that it’s in from a different source. How do you know that your credit will be taken seriously? Truth is: you don’t. With online colleges you can never be completely sure that it’s real- or if it is- that your work would be credited. Here’s an example: A person takes a college course online. They do great work, and after the course is finished, they don’t get credit. How do you think that person would feel? They’d probably be mad. They did all this work-and for nothing. I would be mad if that happened to me. Now here’s a different example: Another person takes college online. What they don’t know is that the course is a scam. They do outstanding work, and when they’re finished, the person(s) running the scam shuts it down and takes the person’s work. That person would be outraged. Here’s one last example. A different person takes an online course. They do excellent work and when the course is finished, they’re completely done. No scams, complete credit for their work, all good. They get a great job, and have a good life. Happy example. Another thing that’s stupid on the Net is that there are things called Diploma Mills. You want a quick and easy diploma without doing all the work? Just find a diploma mill online. After two days you could get a diploma. Here’s an example: A person doesn’t want to pay for college. So what does he do? He looks for a diploma mill online. Gets a diploma in any field he wants and goes off to get a job. Does he get caught? I don’t know. I’m not exactly sure if diploma mills are legal or not, but they just sound stupid. I mean a kid could go online and get a diploma. Now you’ve heard my view on online colleges- what’s yours?

How is online bill paying dangerous?

By Peyton

Online bill paying is one of the modern luxuries that many people have chosen to take advantage of. Even though it is extremely dangerous, online bill paying is also very handy.

When paying your bills online you have to use credit cards, and in order to use them you have to put in your credit card numbers, and pin numbers online. This can prove to be very dangerous due to the fact you are entrusting a very insecure line of communication with some of your most valuable information. Not only are you trusting your information online, you are also trusting a company with information that is not to be shared.

When you put your credit card number online it is equivalent to putting it on a brightly decorated sign in the middle of central park declaring it for all the world. I mean come on people, when are you going to realize that nothing on the internet is private, everything is everyone’s business.

On another note when you give a company your credit card information, you are giving them access to your money. They may be trustworthy, hey some people are. But they may also share it with other companies who will then take them and charge you for items you never purchased. I’m not saying that all companies will, but there is always those who do.

After hearing the pros and cons, you have a decision to make. If you want to take a risk, be my guest, who am I to tell you any different.

Social Networking

by Megan

Myspace is a fun place to connect with your friends and maybe meet some new ones, buy how can you be sure you are talking to Fred who claims he is 15 and lives in Canada? You can’t

Many people believe who they are talking to, is who they day they are. You can never be sure though. Maybe Fred is actually 40.

Social networking is not always a bad thing though. There are many pros. For in3e, you can get in touch with an old friend, or you can keep in touch and chat with your school friends.

There is such a thing called “false friends” though. False friends are friends that are on you top 8, but they wouldn’t be there for you when you needed them, or id you wanted to hangout with them. I guess it is kind of hard when you live in different states.

People talk different on the internet, too. If you were at school you wouldn’t announce out loud, “I am not going to sharpen my pencil.” People just don’t do that. It’s weird. So why do people post bulletins saying that? Internet is changing the way we communicate. Pretty soon people will be doing that 24-7. Right now they only do it half of the time.

As for me, I enjoy social networking as long as I don’t give out too much information.

Online Gambling

by Jordan

The average gambler will spend approximately $300 a night at a casino. They go to casinos up to 4-7 times a week. “Very few heavy gamblers walk out without losing about $500, I’ve worked at Casinos for many years and very little times I’ve seen people just walk away, but there are still those people who spend $10,000 a night.” As quoted from my grandma, Joanne Fredrickson, a former casino worker for 30 years.

But who really knows how much they actually spend inside the privacy of their own house? The advantage of playing a quiet game of poker with friends rather than online with strangers is that if you are playing with friends and co-workers they know you well enough to tell you to stop betting. If you were online however, they wouldn’t try and stop you from blowing all your money; they want you to lose all your money.

Casinos are sometimes just as dangerous as playing online, in some states there are laws saying you are not allowed to drink while gambling. But where it is allowed, they come and serve you drink after drink. By doing this the casino is hoping that if they get enough alcohol in you that you wouldn’t pay as much attention to what you are doing and become a little less aware of what is going on around you, maybe you wont notice just how much money you are losing.

People can only guess on how much the gamblers really spend each night, the only people who really know are the gamblers themselves. The gamblers who really have a problem deny that there is anything wrong and they lie to make it seem like they have everything under control.

Thousands of people are up late each night gambling online. If they aren’t careful chatting online, or if someone they have been chatting with for a couple weeks puts them into a false sense of security, they could by mistake give out the password to their account. If your password was to get into the wrong hands there could be devastating consequences. You could lose everything; they would have access to your credit card numbers, your bank account, and they would spend your whole life savings. Results of gambling could be life changing either in a positive or a negative way, they need to gamble safely.

Online Shopping

by Grant

Online shopping is a very convenient way to find things that are not in stores. My mom buys stuff online all the time like Christmas presents, clothes, shoes, birthday presents, etc., but there is a danger to this. Billions of people buy stuff from the Internet every day, and give there identity away to strangers. How do you really know that the company that you are buying from can keep your credit card number, your name, address, phone number, and many other vital information safe from other people just looking for trouble. You have to be careful with buying things from a company that you have no idea about. Before you buy something you should do some research on it and see if they are okay. Some people are so clueless to think that someone on the other side could possibly steal there identity that they give everything away. Another dangerous way to give away your identity is by giving it away when you are talking to someone online. You have to make sure that you know exactly who it is before giving them your name or anything. I think the Internet is a great place to buy things from, and communicate, but if you aren't careful you may a victim of a serious identity theft problem, which unfortunately is a popular thing that is happening daily.

E-MAILING

By Cecilia Cervantez

One thing we know for sure is that communicating with people across town, across the country or even overseas has been found to be effortless with the aid of technology. E-mail has been one of these forms that allowed for easier communication. There are plenty of advantages of e-mailing, and when there are advantages it is only natural to trust that disadvantages also exist, which I believe is true.

Speed is an advantage; a very import and critical one. Sending an e-mail takes a few seconds, replying to one takes just the same amount of time and being able to send the same message to more than one person saves time. Another advantage includes the ease at which whole documents can be sent without having to print. Using e-mail you do not need to pay fees for extra time or long distance like on a telephone.

Many of us look at e-mailing without thinking of the disadvantages, and yet we seem to know all the advantages. Let me introduce you to a few of the inconveniences: It is extremely easy to get infected by a computer virus. It is also very easy to be misunderstood when you write to someone, causing confusion in your conversation. Another thing is privacy; your account can be hacked or it's easy to make a simple mistake of sending it to the wrong person. E-mailing, as you can see, has its ups and downs like any other thing.

Internet Research

by Andrea

How often do you research in the library? If you were to ask me, not usually. When I research, I get on a search engine, like Google, and type in my subject. Once I’ve found my information, I copy, paste, summarize the information, and turn in my report. The Internet saves me time, by not having to go to the library, and energy, by not having to flip through books, but how accurate is my information?

Not everyone in this world is 100 percent correct, and many people have access to the Internet. Anybody could post their information. They could either be making things up, or are inaccurate.

The Internet has questionable and reliable information, but how do you tell the difference? When you get online, look for websites that have .gov (government), .edu, or .org (university) domains. Generally, government, university, medical center, and health organization websites are credible because they’re not trying to get you to buy something. They try to give you the facts to help you make an informed decision. If you’re still not sure where to go, talk to someone that does know or can give you an idea, like a teacher.

Remember, next time you’re on the internet, consider the source.

Plagiarism in Schools

by Alex King

Cyber plagiarism, cut and paste, cyber cheating, high tech cheating, "patch writing" (R. M. Howard), theft of intellectual property: all these terms describe ways students use others’ words and ideas without attribution, whether deliberately or inadvertently.

Today, technology has become so advanced that plagiarism in high schools has become a major problem. Probably the most detestable task for a student is the projects they have to do at school. Few resorted to cheating that was thought to be the easiest solution to the problem. Copied papers were handed in and claimed to be the original ones. Now that the command of the Internet has become inversely proportionate to age, the process of cheating has turned out extremely easy. High school, college and university students log on the internet download papers or articles and present them as their own. And since there is plenty of material in the English language, the cheating phenomenon in English speaking countries has acquired the magnitude of an epidemic.

Responding to cheating is perhaps one of the most distasteful, time-consuming, and undervalued tasks that a teacher can face. Detecting plagiarism sometimes begins with a hunch or suspicion, and tracking it down is most often a very time-consuming effort.

The one main problem with plagiarism in schools is that it is so easy to do. So easy, in fact, that would one suspect that this entire paper could have been plagiarized. Coincidentally, it is! This entire paper, excluding this last paragraph, is not rightfully mine. I might mention, though, that it took me almost as long to find the material as it would have to write an original essay! So think twice before you take the risk! Plagiarism is not only morally wrong, it simply isn’t worth it!

Sources:
http://www.lemoyne.edu/library/plagiarism/index.htm

http://www.lemoyne.edu/library/plagiarism/detection.htm

http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Reviews/Specific.aspx?ArticleId=12152

Viruses

by Abby Watson

When you hear the word virus, what do you think of? I bet you don’t think about the viruses you can get on the Internet. These viruses can do anything from causing some pop-ups When you start-up your computer to causing your entire system to crash.

Why do people make viruses? Because they want to make money, or they are just jerks, but money is more probable. How do they make money off of viruses? Well some companies that create anti-virus soft wear also make viruses so you have a reason to by their soft wear. While others make them because they want your to buy something from them or just to be annoying.

You can get viruses from just going to websites and you can get from the things you have downloaded. Sometimes it seems like for some sites, putting a cookie on your computer isn’t enough. (Cookies are files that are stored on your computer when you go to a website.) So they give you a virus that gives you a pop-up when you start up your computer or something else that is extremely annoying to say ‘I was here!’.

The nice thing is that you can get anti-virus soft wear to block these viruses and others to keep you reasonably safe. And as long as you keep updating you should be good. Another good idea is to scan every file you download or sometimes websites. Running your spy sweeper or ant virus once a week is also a smart move.

You can get viruses from any site and you never know how bad the virus cab be. Don’t be a victim and limit your use of likes that spammers give out or from people you don’t know. Over all it is a good idea not to trust people on the Internet.

Google

by Andrea

Google is a great search engine tool to be able to use in the 21^st century. It is as if you have an encyclopedia times 100 at your fingertips. You can look anything and everything up within a matter of seconds. There are few limits to Google. There is at least one thing that connects everyone world wide; Google.

Some teachers still want students to memorize everything. This seems like an antiquated idea now that we have Google. There is so much information that you can access on Google that there is a limited need to memorize anything. Most teachers want students to memorize everything from every kind of flower to every river in South America. The students just need to know is the most known flowers and the biggest river in South America; the Amazon. The rest can be left to Google.

Google can be a great assistance to you both at work and at home. You can Google (yes, verb and a noun!) someone that you need more information about or you can go on a satellite map and find a street in a remote country. Before Google, finding places meant using one or more atlases. Now you can just go to Google Earth© and go to the satellite then focus in on the specific place you need, and print a color map if you need to find the origin of the Spaniard cockatoo, use Google. Do a search for both information on and images of Spaniard cockatoos. In a matter of seconds you have all the information you need.

Google is a great tool to get any information you need or want in the most expedient way. Francis Bacon once said, “Knowledge is power” and with Google, it’s true. Especially since I found Francis Bacon‘s name with a Google search!