Many people use the Internet nowadays as a primary communication tool. They make business plans, they talk to their friends, and most people use it even more than the phone or personal contact. Why do they use it? Because it is quick, convenient and easy to do. They trust it to make important business or personal decisions. It isn't rare for people to break up over the 'net. But really how trustworthy is it? How can you know who exactly you are talking to?
Most people have gotten the unidentified phone call, someone calls your home and says that it is a different person than they actually are. You can't be sure of who it is calling you. Many people have caller ID, but most don't, the only proof you have is the sound of their voice. Well, on the Internet you don't even have the sound of the voice, you just have the text to read. It usually is easy to tell who an e-mail message is from because of the from line. But did you know that it is just as easy to send an e-mail that looks like it is from the President of the USA, or from yourself. All you have to do is change one setting in your e-mail program. Unless the person reading the message is technically knowledgeable, it is unlikely that you could even figure out that the message is not from president@whitehouse.gov, and is instead from me@redune.com
The form of communication most commonly used among teens, is ICQ. The instant messaging program that most people have running on their computers. Most think that this is very secure because to log on as another person you need to have their password, and you have to get authorization from the person you want to talk with to be able to tell when they are online. Both of these facts are essentially true, but there are ways to get around them. If you wanted to appear to be a different person on ICQ, you could just sign up for another # and enter the person's name, e-mail address and any other information that you may know about the person. Then you can add people to your list and they will think that you are that person, because all of the information you have entered, shows you as the person you are pretending to be. There are even programs circulating, that allow you to steal the password of another ICQ user, just enter their ICQ#, and it tells you their password. The same goes for bypassing authorization, there are hundreds of programs which can be easily obtained that let you add anyone to your contact list without their permission.
Fortunately there are services that allow you to have secured, guaranteed communication. But they are either hard to use, or cost money. So people will continue to use unsecure communication, they just have to be careful. And to all those who receive unusual messages, always question them. Do not accept weird messages to be from the sender that you assume them to be, do whatever you can to verify their identity.