Internet (Ab)Users

The government are looking to put the Internet in our schools, so that all the little kids can go surfing without the parents worrying about the 'phone bill they'll ride up. It's not the 'phone bill the parents need to worry about when their children go to IRC with their friends, or pick up their e-mail. It's the people who make the Internet unsafe for children, and everyone else who switches their modem on for a surf. Everyone on the Internet (and anyone who isn't on it and reads magazines), knows what Spam is. To 'Netheads, it isn't the pork and ham available in tins, it's the junk mail strewn with exclamation marks and quotation marks that fills our mailboxes with crap we don't want to buy, or visit, or download. Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail (as it is also known) can advertise anything from a mass e-mailer to let you send spam, to a new XXX hardcore porn site which, to some mailers, is a mouse click away. Not the sort of thing you want your 10-year old son to click on really. Most people who aren't on the 'Net probably think Internet abuse ends with spam. How wrong they are. Going on the Web, you can type in just about anything sexually related, and if you end with .com then the chances are you're off to a hardcore porn site. I read not too long ago about how a perfectly innocent search for "Bambi" lead a young Disney fan to a site explaining the joys of female dominatrix. Oops. The Internet is also used to spread pirated software. Digital Corruption have their own website (I'm not printing the URL as that would be supporting their actions), which they use to boast about their actions and pass it off as "educational". It's when you get to IRC the trouble can start. Just joining a server could subject you to a message from a bot on an XXX channel. Joining a channel isn't so bad, until you get involved in an argument with someone. Just about anything could start an argument, and you have no idea who the person you're arguing with is, unless you've met them before. They could threaten a ping flood (which screws up your connection), they could flood your server (which can take down your entire network, domain or ISP), or you could log on to check e-mail only to see they've used their account to send you 20-30Mb worth of e-mail you don't want, known as a mailbomb. Often, the ISP's have abuse addresses for which you can report this kind of thing (e.g. abuse@u-net.net or abuse@demon.net), but, and this isn't a total criticism of all ISPs, often nothing is done about it. People who (ab)use the Internet in this way are the people who are giving the 'Net a bad name. People worried about Spam don't join, and they fear allowing their children to try it at school in case they are spammed onto some hardcore porn when they're aged only seven. It's time a stop was put to it all. Instant action should be action against the minority of spammers, mailbombers, flooders and pornmasters who ruin the Internet for the majority of sane users who are there for a bit of fun, or to chat with their mate on IRC. The last thing I want to do is end up being ping flooded of or mailbombed when I'm just trying to be a good netizen. The line is that if the government want our children to surf the Internet the way it should be surfed, they should remove anything that deviates from the path. It's not the users that screw up the reputation, , it's the abusers. And they must go. The opinions expressed here are those of Peter Price and Peter Price alone. They are in no way influenced by those around him, nor do they represent the views of those around him. They are purely his thoughts.