Internet Dangers

Essay by PaperNerd ContributorUniversity, Bachelor's August 2001

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Internet Dangers The Internet is a form of communication that is open to the world. Anyone can use it for any number of tasks from research to entertainment. Companies, large and small, use it to advertise and sell products. Individuals hold auctions with the largest market in the world. Anyone who wants to can be seen and heard on the Internet. This open form of rapid interaction has spawned the term global village. However, like a village, everyone is not the same. In fact, different people have different agendas. This is also true on the Internet. People use it for gathering information, others for communication, and some for profit. However, there are all kinds of people, and some of them can even wish to do harm. These people who intend harm can do so in a great variety of ways. It¡¦s like the terrible acts that are committed in the streets every day.

A person can be walking down the street and be mugged. That person could also be injured, kidnapped, raped, or murdered. These same acts can be committed on the Internet in different ways. Some of the displeasing acts that take place on the Internet are viruses, piracy, and fraud.

Viruses are foreign executables that infect and corrupt or leak information. Some of the different types are boot sector viruses, file viruses, multipartite viruses, parasitic viruses, companion viruses, polymorphic viruses, macro viruses, and hoax viruses. They are categorized by how they move around in a system or by what they target.. For example, boot sector viruses are run during a boot sequence where they attack and cause all sorts of havoc. They can prevent a system from loading, make modifications to files, or a more simple form of a rider that will attack boot files thus crippling the...