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Anonymity on the Internet Essays

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Anonymity on the Internet

Would you rather learn about someone via Internet interactions or face to face? I have noticed increased shadiness when it comes to identifying one’s self on the internet, whether it be on a dating site, in email, through posting on Blogger-type sites, or in instant messaging. There seems to be two different types of people out there, those who are suspicious and those that just don’t seem to care about who read their stuff. This is problematic in many ways. First off, there is the feeling of anonymity and that no one will really know who they are or what they are doing on the web, for example, adults that pose as teens to hopefully seduce a naïve boy or girl, or married/attached individuals that are …show more content…

So many people use online dating sites to find a mate, but how can you know what other person is telling you is accurate?

On the other end of the spectrum, many people, namely, another friend of mine, Georgia (name has been changed) who doesn’t care who sees what she posts on Blogger and LiveJournal and just pours herself out. Personally, I find this a bit unsettling, as I think some details should just be kept to ones self! Perhaps this is part of the demise of the private individual. Because I am suspicious of others, I would never find myself spilling hugely personal details about my life online, however, I can see how those people use the Internet as a sounding board, like a therapist of sorts, or a place to vent and unload emotional baggage. I highly doubt that this will lead to the falling out of the therapist profession, as a cold and non-responsive computer screen cannot replace real people. This seems to also lead to a double life thing, and this is perfectly dangerous. You’d never know John Doe who never cheats on his taxes or misses a Sunday congregation spends his afternoon chatting with pre-teen girls, as if he was a pre-teen boy, trying to get them to meet him at the McDonalds in the next city so he can rape and murder them. Scary! Nor would John Doe know that the innocent and naïve girl he is chatting with is a burly FBI agent just waiting in the wings to catch such a

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