Being Anonymous on the Internet

Privacy is a thing of the past…especially if you use the internet. And who doesn’t use the internet these days? You can use a fake name or a screen name to hide your real identity, but if someone really wants to find out who you are, then they will. Sometimes a person may put too much personal information on social networks. Just because there are spaces to fill in with all of your personal information, does not mean that you actually have to complete it. Then there are people that you choose to “friend” that you don’t even know just to say you have over a 1000 friends on Facebook. To think about it, that’s me. I do not know who some of these people are and what they will choose to do with the information that is on my profile. So I need to rethink who I have accepted as my friends. And then there are the people who know you and set out to get as much information as they can from these sites. You can easily become a victim of a stalker.
Trying to keep personal information private is also a problem when you give out credit card numbers when you are buying items on the internet. If the site is not secure, your identity has just been stolen. And even if the site is secure, sometimes that will not prevent your information from being shared.
Also medical information about you can easily be stolen. If you search the internet for information about certain ailments you might have, those sites you have visited are saved somewhere on the internet and now strangers have information about what may be part of your health problems.
Additionally, being anonymous on the internet is a way for criminals to harm you or your family personally. Many older men and women stalk children on the internet for their own use.
So the internet is a tool that must be used carefully. There are dangers on the internet that we probably haven’t even thought of yet, but someone else has and they are waiting to make honest people’s lives miserable. Yes, the internet has made our lives easier but it has made our lives more open to danger as well.