Internet Threats
by Jonathan Quince
Monday, October 4, 2004 11:17:56
As of today, October 4, 2004, these are the top 5 practical threats against the Internet:
Spam. It would be bad enough if spam only cost millions of dollars in bandwidth and server resource usage (a cost that, as always, is passed on to the consumer). But even worse, spam fundamentally alters the nature of communications on the Internet. By forcing users to munge e-mail addresses on the Web and Usenet, spam makes Internet communications more difficult to use (particularly for the blind or disabled) and destroys the possibility of legitimate automated applications. By burying people's inboxes in offensive, badly-spelled dreck so that important personal and business communications are lost in the noise, spam makes e-mail unpleasant and impractical to use for important correspondence.
The bottom line: Spam is bad, and spammers should be shot on sight.
Spyware, browser hijackers, and malicious adware. When you can't trust your computer, how can you do business online? When the majority of users' computers are untrustworthy, how can trustworthy applications be built? When Bill Gates Himself has been hit by spyware, how can Aunt Millie hope to keep her computer clean?
Phishing and Fraud. Annoying as hell to the Net-savvy. Detrimental to newbies. A recent study pegged the annual cost of phishing at $500 million in the U.S. alone. Also, this is largely a subset of spam (above).
Viruses, worms, and other malware. This overlaps with Spyware, et al. above for obvious reasons; and since a plurality (if not the majority) of major network worms today are organized crime tools for building botnets for spamming, this also overlaps with Spam. Needless to say, malicious programs are Very Bad.
Wrongful litigation, legislation, and other governmental or government-backed actions. Can I safely criticize a major corporation online? Can DeCSS be distributed as a song? Will peer-to-peer distribution methods be killed for legitimate uses as well as illicit ones? Why are some people hell-bent on destroying lives and livelihoods by attacking the porn industry? Is technical innovation going to be totally strangled by patents run amok — or will that require an act of Congress? Why can a corrupt and powerful organization such as the Church of Scientology wield the power of government to destroy critics' lives and prevent information about Scientology's crimes from being made public?
What freedom of speech and technical innovation do we really have?
So many questions. So few encouraging answers.