Dark Sides of the Internet

Despite many positive results social media has brought to users, there is a dark side of the Internet that still has dangerous elements that can ruin one's business, mental health and reputation. Three of the most typical weaknesses from social media can be named as hacking, Internet addiction and cyberbullying.

Have you ever questioned why hackers often attack the businesses? What do they get from damaging the system? Do they do it for money or just for fun? Does the hacker just simply love hacking?One of the most common reasons why hackers love hacking is to steal or to leak information. It could be customers, internal departments, or even personal data of your business. These are the cases when hackers often choose to attract the attention of the community.In other situations, hackers also steal personal information to use for the purpose of transferring money, borrowing money or withdrawing money. This problem is common in online banking services and online purchases on e-commerce websites; including big names such as Sony, Target, Yahoo, Equifax, eBay, Home Depot, Adobe.Beside previous intentions, political reason is a rare case. However, once an incident occurs, the scale of an attack tends to be very large. Some hackers attack the system to show injustice, some are politically motivated, some also target the government. For example, Anonymous is a famous hacker group. The target of hackers are usually religious organizations, government organizations.

In addition of hacking, hackers use Facebook as a powerful tool to steal the user's information. Hackers use the games and quizzes such as "Who cares about you most?", "Who visit your Facebook?", etc. People who play the game will be stolen information by clicking to the links. Meanwhile, users are required to log in with Facebook to use these apps, which inadvertently allows them to access your personal information without you knowing it. The data warehouses collected by these apps are perfect places for hackers to review andthoroughly exploit before targeting specific information, especially the basic disclosures about date of birth, email address, phone number, etc. After that, they will use a fake photo ID based on the real photo of the victim, impersonate the person who needs to re-login information and send it to Facebook. If done correctly without any loopholes, Photoshop ID can fool through the eyes of censorship, making Facebook itself surrender account login information to the hacker. Along with the risk of getting hacked, an online user could also face other harms, like Internet addiction or cyberbullying.

No longer being a habit, social networking has become an addiction that would generate many negative consequences on users. Nowadays, social media addiction of the youth seems to be very popular. Around the world in general and particularly in United States, the abuse of social networking addiction has been causing great impacts on our society.

It can be said that social networks and online gaming addictions have been a serious factor a lot of mental and psychological effects on users, especially young people in many countries around the world. Social networking still has some positive outcomes. However, using social networking without proper considerations will create many psychological, mental and physical problems when one falls into the "addiction" state. Hence, it is important to use social networking while avoiding being harmed. In America, this situation is no exception. Students and young people nowadays often spend nine hours a day to the internet. People who use the internet a lot will be easily addicted to it. Teenagers are the most popular patients mainly from middle schools and mostly in high school orstudents from universities. This is the period in a person's life where psychological changes occur,impulsive temperamentalis enhanced, causing an individual to be easily caught in temptations.Hospitalized patients often fall into depressed state with symptoms like drowsiness, lack of concentration, body weakening, severe weight loss, and so on. These symptoms combined with cyberbullying are some serious motivations for suicide.

Online bullying is a phrase that people are hearing lately, as more and more people are becoming victims of it. If real life bullying happens only for a certain period of time, online bullying could be unlimited. Cyberbullying happens when an individual is threatened, abused, humiliated, defamed or mentally tortured through text messages, internet or social networks. These are aggressive acts intended by a person or group of people to bully individuals who cannot easily defend themselves. Although cyberbullying is similar to basic bullying, there are a few points to bear in mind. Victims of cyberbullying usually do not know the identity of their bully and they can be harassed or their information can be diffused and shared. Victims are sometimes exposed to these harassments whenever they go online or open their phones or computers to check messages, emails, etc. Unlike ordinary bullying - where bullies are frequent only when the bully is somewhere physically close to the victim.

In short, the best solution for everyone against hacking is being high alert, not arbitrarily using Facebook apps, and at the same time hiding information about your home, email, etc. If you want to be safety when you access to online. Make sure that your information are protected. If the websites require your information, you should know that they are trustful websites. In the end, social media is just a temporary entertainment for stressful school or work. The Internet is not worth it for someone to generate an addiction. It is virtual because when finished, we all still have to go back to reality to face our daily responsibilities.

References

1. Cyberbullying. (2012). L. I. Gerdes (Ed.), At Issue. Detroit, MI: Greenhaven Press.
2. Facebook Scamming, Hacking, and Safety. (2017). University Wire, p. University Wire, Dec 14, 2017.
3. Jiang, Huang, & Tao, Qiaolei, Xiuqin, Ran. (2013). Internet Addiction: Cybersex. 809-818.

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