Internet Security - Are We Ready For the Web?

Have you ever tried searching information about yourself on the Internet? You probably won't be disappointed. If you've been living online for a significant amount of time, this personal information will definitely be available. If you're wondering how or why, the answer is simple. With your personal information on your blogs, social networks, writing forums, and other publicly available databases, you won't be that hard to track.

Anybody who's ever had to substantially engage in Internet activity will have definitely made his online presence felt. In fact, companies and other organizations have been using this property of the Internet to turn up people's personal details easily for their legal ends. Once they get hold of job applicants' resumes, they may search these people up on the Internet as a way of narrowing down their choices on whom to hire. Landlords also benefit from this online feature which allows them to get to know their potential tenants before any contracts are signed.

There's actually more to these public databases than what might be beneficial to employers. To understand this means to be aware that public database searches base results on anything with the name of the person being searched. When this name makes a hit, the search will immediately display birth and death certificates, court records, vehicle accidents, criminal records and who knows what else it may bring for the searcher.

This particular ability of the Internet to reveal information about a person with such ease has drawn conflicting reactions from different sectors of society. For example, when people act as employers or landlords looking up information on their potential employees or tenants, this is viewed as an advantage. However, when these employers or tenants realize that they, too, could be the easy subjects of the same search, the idea is suddenly objectionable or even evil.

This double standard in digesting the realities of the Internet raises the question of whether people are, in fact, ready for it. The issue is further compounded by the existence of hackers and other types of Internet cons who relentlessly work at turning an otherwise innocent technology into a weapon for cyber warfare which the general surfing public will simply want out of.

The last thing that we all want to happen, though, is wake up one day and no longer be the person we always thought we were because somebody has stolen everything we were supposed to be. Identity theft is certainly no longer a fantastic idea that we only used to see in the movies. It has become real because of our IP address which serves as our trail that hackers can use to track back to us.

If the Internet is, at all, going to be a great place worth visiting, visit it with an IP changer to simply enjoy anonymous surfing.