Some Interesting Facts and Warnings about the Internet

I spend some considerable time each day on the internet. Each morning I look at my favorite blogs and save those posts which are interesting. About four years ago I received an email from my ISP informing me of a complaint from a book publisher – I was being accused of illegally downloading a copy of one of their Harry Potter books, I had not done this thing and I wondered if anyone in my household had done so.  Then I noticed the book was written in German!  We had had no guests, and both sons were away in college.  And no one in our family can read German!!!

A year ago I was contacted, again by my ISP, that someone at my IP address had downloaded a copyrighted movie – pornographic Japanese – in violation of copyright. Sure enough, that was my IP that was reported.  I had never heard of the movie and could not remember ever seeing any oriental pornographic movie. I went to google and did a search for a torrent with that movie’s name.  The only mention was a site located in Bulgaria!  I have not mentioned here that my son came home from school after buying an Apple computer – he would not let me get the MAC address so he could use our home router.  So I disabled the password for two months – the complaint I received about the movie indicated it had been downloaded during that time.

Then I thought about the complaint.  How could the copyright holder have known what IPs were downloading unless they violated their own copyright by making the movie available and then tracking any downloaders. I next heard from a law firm which provided me much information about a federal lawsuit – giving court and judge’s name, etc – against many downloaders.

There is much information about many of us on the web. A friend of mine ‘googled’ herself and discovered the court documents from her ‘messy’ divorce were there for all to see.  Also to be seen were her last three attempts to succeed in different businesses.  Another associate was running for congress in the recent election. I googled her and the third item on the list showed seven pictures – six of her and one nude white woman’s picture – my associate is African-American. I looked at the website name and it was her name “dot net.”  I asked a google rep visiting town what could be done about it, and was told I could buy the site.  I didn’t, she lost the election, and the site disappeared the next day. Tell me the picture was not politically motivated.  If we had bought the site, another site could have popped up to replace it.

I will post more, but let this be a word to the wise.