Discuss the View Point That the Development of the Internet Represents a Threat, Not a Promise.

The internet has become part of many people’s daily lives. Lots of people use the internet for convenience for both pleasure and business. We live in an era where fast and instant have become the norm. The internet is a tool that is used to gain information in an instant. With wireless connections, mobile devices and broadband society expects to get information instantly at their finger tips.

The development of the internet has caused it to present a threat, not a promise. In the following essay I will be discussing just how the internet represents a threat, not a promise by exploring the avenue that the internet can be used to commit crimes such as identity theft, computer hijacking, Viruses and Social networking sites.

First and fourth most the development of the internet represents a threat, not a promise in the form of crime. This is crime such as identity theft otherwise known as identity fraud. In an article written on the BBC news dated on the 18th October 2010, it states that in the past year over an estimate of 1.8million people have been effected by identity theft in the past year alone, in addition to this ‘the National Fraud Authority’ stating that identity thieves have gained a figure of £1.9 billion pounds within the year. This works out to be £1,000 to every identity stolen this is predominantly in the UK.

Dr Bernard Herdan, the chief executive of The National Fraud Authority states that "Stolen and false identities are a significant enabler of crime," also disclosed in this report businesses as well as organisations lose £800 million annually in attempts to battle identity theft. Dr Bernard Herdan is also quoted to say "Losses from identity theft and false identities don't just affect the individual, but also hit the public and private sectors."

There are many consequents to Identity theft such as it violates peoples Data protection rights. It also can lead to individuals being falsely accused of crimes which can lead to them being prosecuted following imprisonment or having to pay a fine. The other effects of identity theft could leave the victim with large amounts of debt resulting in poor credit rating.

Secondly Computer hackers can represent a threat to the development of the internet, as computer hackers have the ability to illegal access individual, corporate, and government computer systems. By computer hackers having the ability to break into computer systems, they can break into sealed data bases allowing them access to steal or tamper with key information which can lead to the release of false details or leak wrongful information.

An example of this would be if a terrorist cell hacked in to a government computer system then they could gain key information into national security and defence systems permitting them to paralyse a nation by launching a terrorist attack and taking out the countries means of defence leaving them vulnerable