Poll: Most want U.S. to make Internet safer

[sabra]

<<SNIP>>
http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/business/technology/11900157.htm

Poll: Most want U.S. to make Internet safer

By Ted Bridis

Associated Press


WASHINGTON - Most Americans who describe themselves as likely voters believe the government should do more to make the Internet safe, but they don't trust the federal institutions that are largely responsible for creating and enforcing laws online, according to a new industry survey.

People who were questioned expressed concerns over threats from identity theft, computer viruses and unwanted ``spam'' e-mails. But they held low opinions of Congress and the Federal Trade Commission, which protects consumers against Internet fraud.

The FBI scored more favorably among Internet users in the survey but still lower than technology companies, such as Microsoft and Dell.

The telephone survey of 1,003 likely voters was funded by the Washington-based Cyber Security Industry Alliance, a trade group that has lobbied the Bush administration to pay greater attention to Internet security. The alliance also has cautioned lawmakers against what it considers unnecessary security laws.

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[ixion]

1. these damn safety freaks are nothing more than thinly veiled fascists

you simply cannot remove the nasties from life, and when you try to via proxy (like Big Brother) you wind up living in a police state, much like the one we live in today. :grr:

[Tommymac]

24. FEAR! FEAR!!!! FEAR!!!!!!!

Jaysus, don't they ever stop?

I haven't said today how much I hate these people.

[Bucky]

2. A-men! I'm for that

One good idea Joe Lieberman (yes, him!) came up with back in the 90s was to create a new domain suffix where you could put all the "adult" content---adult meaning stuff mostly adolescent boys are interested in looking at. So you'd have .coms, .orgs, .govs, .nets, nationality domains, and finally .sexs. Then you got--wallah--a porn free internet except for that one "red light district." Filtering would be a breeze and pr0n ads could be safely obliterated without bringing up first amendment questions.

[northzax]

7. they're trying this

but why would anyone move from .com to .xxx? why move into the red light district if you don't have to? I mean sure, have the option, but who's going to decide what's .xxx and what's .com? any site that shows a breast? uses the word "sex"? how about text erotica? would that be .xxx as well?

it's unenforceable. I recommend to you that if you don't want to see porn, don't go looking for it. Write an email to any website that you stumble on with porn ads and tell them why you will never visit the site again. get a decent spam filter.

i spend 8-10 hours a day on computers, probably 4 of that on the web, I get 50-100 emails a day, and somehow I manage to not see any porn. I bet you can too.

[Bucky]

10. I assume you don't have children

I can't complain about your patronizing attitude since I tend to cop that same attitude myself. But the reasons I'd like to see "adult" content on the internet segmented into a .xxx zone is because as a parent and as a teacher, I'm also responsible for what young people besides myself are able to view on the internet.

[northzax]

12. Piece of cake

get a decent surf-watching program. oh, and monitor their internet access. You know what they watch on TV, why not the 'net? Seriously (and I have taught ten years olds with computers, so I understand the difficulty, but with a decent blocking program they are not likely to stumble on anything they can't see in the checkout line at CVS.

I personally have no restrictions on my machine, I could be downloading porn all day (eventually my boss might notice I'm not getting any work done, but still) and I find that I never stumble onto porn, I actually have to go looking for it (which I have long since ceased to do at home) The 'net is a big, wide open place, and kids need to learn about that, trust that you have raised them right, and taught them well. And frankly, a little porn ain't that bad, in the long run (I was stealing playboys from my dad's collection, I still remember the copy of Moist I found at the recycling center on a school trip, wowza! <I was eleven> and you know what my mom did when I got caught with it? sat me down and lectured me, and taught me, through her words and actions, that it wasn't real. It worked, I'm fairly well adjusted, and have outgrown my desire to see pictures of naked women on a regular basis. Just as you can block programming on your TV with the vChip, you can block internet programming.

[SlavesandBulldozers]

14. when we finally arrive at the point of absolute fascism

it will have been because of the "for the children" bullshit.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

31. What will the children think of your post?

[Orsino]

15. So how should it be enforced?

When an ISP gets a DNS request from a customer, and points a www.something.com to an IP address, what steps do you recommend when, months or years later, one of the pages buried in that web server turns out to have naughty pictures on it?

Would you want a porn squad spending its days looking for such content, then obtaining and sending court orders telling ISPs to change or delete entries from zone files?

Who will pay the salaries of these hootchie cops, and who will foot the bill for their accounts that enable them to delve into for-pay sites? What would you have done about sites that don't use DNS at all--force the owners to buy .xxx domains?

[consuming]

19. what rip

[LivingInTheBubble]

25. You are responsible which is the way it should be,

laws cannot protect children anywhere near as well as a responsible adult. Regulating the internet is almost impossible, keeping an eye on children is much easier and is actually what parents and teachers jobs are.

[blogslut]

23. That article...

...said absolutely nothing about adult content. The safety fears result from spam, viruses and identity theft.

If you really want to take measures to protect the kids from adult content go to:

http://icra.org

[mongo]

33. Who gets to decide what goes into the XXX domains?

How about sexuality.org? or any site dedicated to teen sexuality education?

How about my stores site? There is no explicit content - except on packaging in our online store. The online store is an affiliate program and we have no control over it. There is some discussion of sexual topics on the rest of our website - should we be religated to the .xxx domain?

How do you control this if implimented? If I'm were an internet pornographer and wanted to keep my .com domains, wouldn't I just move my office offshore? Or should we censor out stuff from other countries like China is doing.

How will this eliminate porn ads? I assume you are talking about spam, not pop-ups. Creating an interent "red light district" won't address spam at all.

[Liberal Veteran]

3. Seems overblown to me....

Most identity theft doesn't result from the internet. ID thieves generally use other means to get the information they need to adopt your identity for nefarious purposes.

Viruses can avoided by a few simple things like having a good antivirus program and not opening unsolicited email attachments.

Spam is a problem, but not so much a security risk as a nusiance. Generally, having a free email account for signing up for various websites and another personal email account that you only share with friends for the stuff you really want is enough to avoid the bulk of spam.

[Occulus]

9. the one thing people don't understand about spam

is where they get your information.

They get it from you. Collectively. Every time you send in your "registration information" for a piece of software you downloaded and installed, you better believe they'll use ALL that information for themselves and their business partners.

The solution is simplicity itself. Create a free email account at, say, Hotmail. Use your hotmail account as the 'spam' account; simply never even bother opening it, just have all your "contact info" sent there. As long as you never, ever give out the email address you do regularly use, there won't be nearly as much spam there, if any at all.

My Hotmail account has something like 300+ spams emails sitting in it. My real email account has three.

[evermind]

4. Make the internet safer: outlaw Windows(tm) :) (n/t)

[Gregorian]

5. Government stay away!

I'll take the threat of identity theft any day. I'm much more affraid of my government. Stay away from one of the few freedoms we have.

And what's more, the companies selling goods have a bigger interest in providing security than any government employee ever will. And they are the ones who will ultimately deal with problems anyways. Not some new government agency (ie. employment agency).

[pinkpops]

6. Amen

[BattyDem]

8. If people would simply take the time to learn about PC security ...

they wouldn't have any problems. Too many people don't update their virus protection (if they even have it), they don't know how to prevent and/or eliminate spyware and they have no idea what a firewall is. They can't even find the security settings on their browser, much less set them correctly. :eyes:

[iconoclastNYC]

11. We must be vigiliant against this.

We all know what a threat the Internet is to the rich and powerful who control us.

[Orsino]

17. I'm willing to do my part is securing the nation.

Anyone got a credit card number and an e-mail address I can use?

[youspeakmylanguage]

13. Microsoft and Dell are ranked higher than the FBI...

...when it comes to Internet crime? What f**king planet are these people living on?

[Deja Q]

29. LSD and saltine crackers. Especially if they think MS is better at safety

:wow: :eyes: :banghead:

[Dave Reynolds]

16. I have never been

injured or otherwise maimed by the Internet.

People need to parent their kids, not use computers as babysitters.

[ibegurpard]

18. This is somewhat good news

It means that the majority of people could be persuaded to view attempts to regulate the internet by the government with skepticism.

[daleo]

20. Bush et al would like to make the internets safer

By getting rid of DU and sites like it. Beware of this whole mentality.

[0rganism]

21. Yet More Proof that "likely voters" live in a fucking fantasyland

Safety is an ILLUSION, safety on the "internets" doubly so.

As long as companies are permitted to maintain lightly-protected (or not-at-all-protected) databases of sensitive information and transmit such data unencrypted, we will have identity theft.

As long as we have humans with spare time to indulge their malice using computers which connect to common networks, we will have viruses.

As long as we have dipshits who will click on any damn thing that shows up in their e-mail, we will have spam.

And now that the bush administration has completely corrupted or crippled every federal regulatory agency it can, we have an FTC and an FCC that couldn't find their arses with a roadmap and a mirror, let alone come up with a workable bulk-e-mail regulation.

[annabanana]

22. push poll, push poll..

betcha anything

[fushuugi]

26. the veil of fear, though over-used, has...

once again shown itself. this time it threatens our culture's, and the global communities, only real form of public discourse. for over a year now the Chinese government has been actively blocking certain sites from it's citizens. seeing this success in information blocking, our current government- congress and the presidential administration has set its eye upon our last real ability to freely share ideas and images; debate the issues we all face; and mobilize our resources for protests, letter writing campaigns, etc.

You may say we need to protect our personal and business computers against viruses and spam. Please for the sake of anyone who remembers using a 14.4kbps modem, research what you can do to protect yourself. I'm not talking about subscribing to an insane software upgrading scheme. There are many free alternatives to anything you'll find on a store shelf supported by wire-heads who believe that the internet should be free of corporate influence. You may say we need the government to regulate religious morality on the net, to those who believe that the government's job is to regulate these issues i advise you to join a cult with a propensity to drink flavor-aid. we are a nation of individuals who want nothing more than to be ruled with strong-arm tactics, or am i reading our current societal trends incorrectly? don't allow this to happen silently.

There is more at stake here than most want to see. The internet has always had its dangers, but the rewards of squelching governmental influence greatly outweigh any benefit we would receive from their regulatory mishandling. Once we open the door to their regulations and laws we will be opening a Pandora's box.

[magellan]

30. Absolutely, good post!

Welcome to the DU, fushuugi! Smashing post. I hope you don't mind if I add a few bits to what you wrote. This is a favorite soapbox of mine! ;)

For those who don't use AOL or similar (i.e. providers who baby their customers with integrated firewall and virus protection), there are free firewall, anti-virus and spyware programs available online. They include:

Firewalls - ZoneAlarm, Sygate
Spyware detectors - Spybot, AdWare
Anti-virus - AVG, Avast

There are other popular names. These programs aren't difficult to install, will auto-update, and many of the developers run help forums for answers to installation or troubleshooting questions. Install one of each and that's more than adequate to secure the typical home user, whether using dial-up or a hi-speed connection.

As well, do yourself a favor and stop using MS Outlook/Express and Internet Explorer. MS products are by far the most commonly targeted by virus writers and hackers, just a fact of life. I use Pocomail (not free but it's more for advanced users) and FireFox (free).

I really wish people would stop looking to the government to fix all the BAAAD in the world. Governments are almost always at cross purposes with the people...and in the case of BushCo, won't be happy until they have ultimate power over every minute of our lives. Stop giving them excuses to do so!! What's required to fare well on the internet is a little bit of common sense and initiative, not Big Brother.

Off my soapbox now!

[Demeter]

27. I NEVER Feel Afraid On the Net

Unlike several major cities I could name, starting with DC in the area around the Hill....

[Deja Q]

28. Consumers are brainless shitheads. Corporations MADE THE PROBLEM!

VIA SLOPPINESS AND CUTTING CORNERS. It's about money, period. It's a simple enough deduction made from years' worth of documented cases and issues...

I will not apologize for my slur; they whine and complain when there's a new microsoft bug, yet they won't bother to look at other products.

And while no product is 100% safe, but Microsoft's history has AlWAYS been to deliberately cut corners; it's like they BEG hackers to exploit them. They claimed that for XP, they redesigned how user accounts work. (read: They fixed some of the internal loopholes that allow one user to see another user's restricted files.) But XP still allows easy access to the Administrator by default (doesn't even force you to enter a password) and non-Admin accounts with Admin privvies can do everything as well. This is ASININE. Never mind HUNDREDS of other flaws...

Worse, should Amazon get hacked, they'd better be held liable for all of the data they have on their systems.

If we are to be a corporate culture, we MUST have corporate responsibility. But I've seen nothing even hinting at corporate responsibility; it comes back down to all of us to spend more precious time looking at credit reports andb backtracking every last fucking item on our bank statements. We're human too and unlike you CEO swine, we don't get to play golf 40 hours per week.

[bpeale]

32. Safety?

Parents simply want to abdicate their responsibility for watching their kids to the government ... yet again.