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The internet is a cesspool

All over the world, governments are rolling out measures to protect children from the dangers that are to be found on the internet.

Okay, in many cases these initiatives are actually more about control and surveillance than they are about protecting the kids and the fact that they try to disguise the true agendas by trying to paint a picture of concern about your young is somewhat insulting. However, the fact remains that the internet really can be a nasty and dangerous place.

The dangers are many and varied, everything from illegal images of a perverse nature to countless scams designed to trick people into parting with their hard-earned cash.

When one looks back at the original internet it's hard to believe that we've morphed it into something that really has become a cesspool.

Back in the early to mid 1990s, the internet was an exciting place to be.

The early internet users were likely to have an academic or professional background. Professors and students used it for communications and research, often freely sharing their information in an environment free from commercial imperatives and pressures.

I recall that when I first started using the world wide web banner ads, or ads of any kind, were a novelty and seldom seen. People weren't using the web to flog you products or services but to make it easier to share information without the expectation of financial reward.

Perhaps the very first time I saw any skullduggery was when I received a chain letter from the infamous Dave Rhodes with the subject "MAKE MONEY FAST".

Fortunately, given the fact that most internet users at that time were probably smarter than your average bloke in the street, I don't think there were many who got taken in by this pyramid scheme. Certainly the mathematicians in the audience were probably amused but not fooled.

As for social media, well that wasn't really web-based at all. Instead we had services such as usenet which provided many thousands of different newsgroups, each with a never-ending array of conversations on related subjects.

However, even in these early days there was a fair amount of unsavoury and even illegal content to be found online. Newsgroups such as some of those that fell under the alt.sex heirachy were clearly covering topics that are deemed to be violating legal boundaries. There were also newsgroups that contained uuencoded binary files that were JPEGs of content that would definitely get you in big trouble if you downloaded them.

I think it's fair to say that some parts of usenet were the equivalent of today's dark web but at the time it appeared as if nobody really cared. That really surprised me. However, I suspect it was simply because the average Net user was more interested in the positives that this technology delivered and didn't really concern themselves with the negative. Odds are that more illegal material was being transferred by the mail system than by the internet and bad-actors with dial-up modems.

Scams were pretty minimal back then because, to be honest, there was very little in the way of online retail sites. Books.com was perhaps one of the very first online retailers I ever came across, specialising in (surprise) books. It was eventually purchased by Amazon in 2008. Ironically, Amazon is now considered the largest online etailer in the world. From tiny acorns...

Perhaps the real turning point for the decline of the internet was when email began to replace the postal service and faxing as a form of communications. That was also when spammers recognised the power of unsolicited mass emailing and the era of spam began.

Spam email soon became a real blight. At one stage, before spam filtering became commonplace and effective, the entire utility of email as a viable communications method was really up for question. People's mailboxes would contain far more spam than genuine emails and wading through the dross became a real drain on time and resources.

Now let's jump forward to today...

The average internet user is no longer an academic type or engineer. Instead, they're just a regular Joe/Jane Blow who uses the technology for entertainment, communications and a raft of other things such as shopping, banking, etc.

The online space is no longer the pure, safe, benevolent environment it originally was. Dave Rhodes and a few alt.sex.binary.* newsgroups aside, there was very little in the way of threats to your savings, sanity or security "back in the day". Instead, the modern internet is a literal minefield for the naive and ignorant.

Malevolent emails and websites lurk around every corner, trying to exploit software bugs or trick people into downloading malware that will ransom their data or steal their login credentials for banking or credit card deetails.

Bad actors trawl social media platforms trying to con the gullible out of their hard earned cash by making offers "too good to be true" and even bonafide platforms such as YouTube and Facebook regularly cary ads that are nothing but scams, costing consumers billions of dollars a year.

Sure, the internet is a far more exciting, vibrant and useful place than it was thirty years ago but my oh my, the streets are not as clean and it really is a dangerous place if you're not prepared for the worst.

The really interesting question is... what will it be like in another five, ten or even 20 years?

Carpe Diem folks!

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