All Internet Content Carries Risk

Read that again:

All Internet content carries risk.

A computer expert said that. What it means is everything you get from the internet—email, pictures, text, videos, phone-calls—has risk to it.

Just like the rest of life: driving to church has its risks. Sending my kids to school has risks.

Owning a television has its risks. My family can waste time in front of it, get marketed things they don’t need, see things that aren’t appropriate.

On the other hand, not owning a television has its risks. It’s one of the main ways you hear about tornado watches and warnings in my area, for instance.

This Is Why Most People Get Victimized

Here’s why this is so important to absorb. I see people have internet problems for three reasons:

• They assume safety. Only other people need fire-alarms, right?

• They think it’s too complicated. I couldn’t mount a fire alarm by myself, could I?

• They tire of the inconvenience. Like a fire alarm that goes off too often, they take the battery out and leave it on the counter.

I’m here to tell you the opposite:

• There is risk.
• You are capable of taking reasonable steps to protecting your family.

• It will be a little convenient, but not as inconvenient as

1) turning off the Internet or 2) becoming a victim.

The Core Problem

It’s easy to keep bad stuff off from the Internet out of your house: just disconnect.

That’s the problem, isn’t it. There are two easy things to do:

• Block everything

• Block nothing

But that’s not what we want. We want the weather, we want the news, we want to order books. But we don’t want the junk.

We want to let some thing through. That’s the tough part.

Remember This

When we talk about how to make your household more secure from Internet abuse, there’s always going to be this tension:

• The stuff we want:
  • convenience,
  • pretty sites,

• access to information.

• The stuff we want to avoid:
  • Viruses
  • Spyware

• Offensive content

A Little Irony

You may have noticed that I haven’t mentioned specific kinds of offensive content. I prefer specificity, but if I’ve set my home router to block web sites containing some of those words. If I write them, my own home content filter will block me from reading my own blog.

Even here: convenience and access vs. protection.