The internet allows people to show whatever side they wish, and hide everything else. It is a lot easier to deceive people you aren't speaking to face to face, this leads to a lot of scamming and deception.
People even go so far as to make fake 'people'. It's a simple task to take a picture from the internet and claim it as your own. Most people will take this at face value unless it is especially unbelievable. This may not seem like such a big issue, but it has the potential to ruin lives. People can fall in love online but this is probably 90% of the time not as it seems. The word "catfish" has had a new definition added to the US dictionary.
USinformal
lure (someone) into a relationship by adopting a fictional online persona.
"he was being catfished by a cruel prankster"
"Catfishing" is the act of luring people into fake relationships for personal gain, or due to other parameters. People do this for money, information, items, or more sinister reasons.
Use of computers in our day to day lives also means a lot of information about us is stored online. This information is valuable to both hackers and big corporations. Information about people sells, and both sides of the law will try and use it to their own profit any way they can.
To stay safer, you should make sure you use a constantly updated anti-virus and have a good firewall as well.
The internet and the anonymity that comes with it tends to give the average person more confidence, be that for a good thing (like talking in more confident manner) or a bad thing (harassing and threatening other people e.g. keyboard warriors). I can't really say whether I think the positives of anonymity out-way the negatives, but you do tend to here more about the negatives of anonymity.
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