SMS

Today we are discussing 0900-sms numbers used (in Austria) in TV shows to catch the opinion of the audience. To send a sms to a 0900 number is usually more expensive than sending a normal sms. A lot of young people are not aware of this fact. The higher rate is usually not displayed either so that it is very hard to find out the exact rate at all.

However we think that people are responsible for their own use of a cell phone and should act accordingly. Maybe it would be a good idea to warn young people - maybe even in school - so they are made aware of the risk they are taking.

Think about it - it's your money!

Handy rip-off

By Maximilian Morgenbessser

Nowadays there is a really big problem. I´m talking about handy rip-off. Many TV-shows – and of course the publisher of these shows – earn quite a lot of money because of votings. Who has to pay this? Teenagers and people who like watching TV are the victims of this. Mostly they have to pay very expensive tariffs. Hower, it is evil because so people´s emotions are used in order to earn money dubiously.
Mostly teenagers who have only little money have to pay this. There is the beginning of this problem. These people – the evil ones – take money from others who have just little money. As a result, many angry or worried parents shout at their children. But why? As some people want to earn more and more money, a lot of other people has to suffer.

Here is a nice example:

At the show “Starmania” 600.000 young people voted for their favourite singers. The tariff was 0.50 €. So the ORF (official Austrian TV-Station) earns 300.000 €.

Emoticons

by Charlotte Hoffmann

I think that smileys are very important to show your feelings and emotions and if you don't know how to explain it. If you use a smiley your writing partner will exactly know your facial expression. But if you use the wrong smiley there could be many misunderstandings between the both conversation partners.
I sure that smileys make a chat more personally. A text with a lot of smileys will look more colourful and funnier. There were a lot of different smileys which show different feelings as sadness, happiness, confusion, surprise, depression and so on. Using smileys make it easier to show your feelings and your partner will understand you without a declaration.

Faked identity

Oh that’s really bad – I’m lacking for a new girl friend!
OK, no problem. There is this much frequented chat room – no problem, there is an interesting girl: Fitting age, similar interests – seems to be a fortune. She gives me a description: 16 years old, blond, student of a high school.
We chatted for some weeks. Unbelievable! She likes the same music, she prefers the same films in cinema – I think I have to meet her.
4 weeks later we have our first date. I almost did not recognize her – only the newspaper she had in her hand showed me who she was: About 25 years old, anything else than blond, without work and interested in some guy to pay for her. I had to run away, to flee immediately.

OK, last time for an internet relationship, I will try it the conventional way – Saturday evening I will go out – to town to have some fun with real people.

Spamer annoy Webuser

By Silvia Taschner

By sending Spam-mails spammer reach the opposite of advertising.
Whether sender of illegal advertisings know what they do, or not? User don’t look at the products of offer, they rather cancel these and/or put the senders on their “black lists”. So these scores of mails don’t reach the desired effect.
But the greatest anger causes the time you have to employ to delete this mails. And because nearly more than 70% are irritated of spam-mails they also don’t look what is standing in this mail.

So maybe more or less wise and expedient advertisings weren’t read just because so many Spamer are sending cruft.

Security

Internet security will be a topic of increasing importance. Steeling data by malware, phishing secret bancing data and take money from the user's account, steeling bandwith by millions of spammails etc.
It would be important to find a method to send e-mails that can non be faked. And to inform people about danger of the use of internet. Many problems are house made - Is your virus scanner up to date?

Hackers and other criminals ...

Ba Nathalie Riedl

Hackers are not cool. They delete important data files or put a virus on your computer. They are able to crack passwords, so they can get access to your computer. Then they delete or change or put a virus on your data files. Some hackers also get into national computers, for exampel into military or a bank computers. There they delete an account or steal the money. In military computers they spy for another land. The damages which can result from hacking isenormous.
I think that hacking is foul, because not everybody is able to protect his computer as well as it is necessary. It is unfair to other people, because some think that their computer is safe and then a hacker comes and deletes everything. Maybe they have fun, but I am of the opinion that it is criminal to interfere with other people’s possessions. It makes one feel vulnerable and insecure. The internet should be a window into the world wide net and not an opportunity for gangsters to enter ones private world. It is all the more dangerous when hackers obtain bank or credit-card codes in order to steal people’s money. Therefore a lot of security measures have been undertaken but it is still not enough because the hackers are always one step ahead. The only advice one can give is that one should be very cautious when opening e-mails from adresses one does not know and that your anti virus programme should always
be the newest one.

Forum

I think that the forums are a very good invention. You can discuss with many different people from other countries about a subject which you are very interested in. I think it is always cool to read other opinions or explanations. And when you are in a forum you always have a chance to get to know some nice people. It is good for yourself because you normally write in English and so you always have a chance to learn some new words.

Copyright Violation

By Simon Nikolas
On the one hand I think it is good to gather information from the internet and use it in presentations or something like that, but on the other hand shouldn’t people gather information from the internet and sell it as their own. It is difficult to say what is allowed and what is not. If somebody takes information from the internet he should write from whom he had taken it. I also think that it is good to use information from the internet because of that it is written in there. But all in all it remains as difficult question.

Spamming

By Katharina Weber
E-Mail-Spamming has become a very common form of advertising today and is also considered as the most widely spread variant of spamming. There are many forms of spamming: You can find undesired ads, messages and posts all over the internet in forums, guest books and so on. I do not really care about spam in my e-mail-folder, I just delete it. Worrying about that wouldn’t really pay off.

But there is one form of spam that really drives me crazy: the sending of chain letters via e-mail and the sending of dubious messages in instant messaging programs such as ICQ. The reason why I hate that is simple: e-mail ads are sent to you by a computer from any firm. Chain letters and other undesired messages come to you from friends, and knowing that people are so silly to really believe what is written in such chain letters and messages gets me on my nerves. I really do not know why somebody sends such crap to his friends. Mostly such messages contain dubious threats, and you can only avert them by sending the message to all the people in your address book. Chain letters don’t have any sense beyond annoying people. Everyone who finds such crap in his e-mail folder should delete it. That is my opinion.

Another thing I don’t understand is why people post messages in guest books and forums that neither fit to the task nor does the person who posts them have any relationship to the other people in the forum. From my point of view, it does not make much sense to write into a guest book of a person who you do not have any relation to. All in all, people should care more about the things they do and not just send stupid messages to their friends.

Hacking

By Maximilian Morgenbesser

Of course, I´m sure that hacking should be forbidden. However, it´s nearly impossible to do this because of the huge knowledge of those people. Nowadays more and more people have computers and lots of them don´t care about the savety of their computers. So they are an easy prey.
However, it´s a moral dilemma, if people don´t mind doing damage on other people. I mean, how would you feel if this happens to you. The only word that describes hackers is “criminal”. In my opinion, this is an offense against your privacy. These days there is a privacy of correspondence written in the law. So the state tries to save our privacy. However, hackers don´t respect this privacy. That´s why I´m of the opinion that hacking is criminal.
On the other hand, it isn´t just an offense against your privacy but it´s also a kind of theft. If a server is hacked, hackers are able to steal thousands of dollars so hackers can be said to be thiefs, robbers and – above all – criminals.

PHISHING

by Clemens Burgstaller (BgBab)

Phishing is a kind of internet criminality. The criminals try to find out some of your personal things like credit card codes or passwords for internet pages. For example Phishers pretend to be Bankers and they say (in e-mail's) that they have to make a data update, and that you should affirm your personal data on a homepage. Some people tell, without their knowledge them their account numbers or other things like that. So are Phishers able to take money from their accounts and it is "legal". The government tries to reduce the Phishing mails by new laws.

Have a look here

Phishing ist eine Internetbetrugsmethode. Die Kriminellen versuchen persönliche Informationen wie Kreditkartencodes oder Internetpasswörter. Einige Phisher geben vor, Bankangestellte zu sein und sie behaupten (in E-Mails), dass sie eine Datenaktualisierung durchzuführen haben. Sie verlangen, dass man seine persönlichen Daten auf einer Homepage bestätigen soll. Manche Leute geben dann, ohne es zu wissen, ihre Kontonummern oder ähnliche Dinge preis. Die Phisher können dann in einer „legalen" Weise Geld von diesen Konten beheben. Die Regierung versucht die Anzahl der Phishingmails zu reduzieren, indem sie neue Gesetzte gegen das Phishing erlassen.

Spamming – sending of undesired advertising

By Alina Scherz

The word Spam comes from a cheap canned meat from the USA and it means the sending of undesired advertising. You often get Spam per E-Mail or by SMS. They find out your E-Mail address because you have to state your E-Mail address, if you want to take part in a forum or if you create an own home page. There are also Spam filters, but you always get some undesired advertising. There is also undesirable advertising in the internet which is called “pop-up”. A good internet program gives you a possibility to block the “pop-ups”.

Smilies

By Marlena Baran

If you want to express your emotions in the Internet and you don't find any words for it, you can use Smileys, also called Emoticons.
You can use Emoticons with sad, angry or happy expressions for instance. The most famous Smiley is: :-)
It's an important method to communicate easier with the partner, because you can understand ambiguous word phrases.
Smileys are used in several programmes, like ICQ, MSN Messenger or Instant Messenger.
Nowadays there are hundreds of different Smileys, like Japenese ones. Smileys were invented on 19th September 1982 by the student Scott E. Fahlman. Emoticons/Smileys are also useful for short messages on mobile telephones.
All in all Smileys are a great invention!

Smileys

by ??

I think smileys are very helpful, because when you don't know what you should write, you can make one of the smileys. Smileys also make more emotions. Smileys are often used in emails, chats and boards. On September 1982, Scott Fahlmann (now he is a Scientist in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University) invented the smileys. Smileys make the text more funny and personally. The program PLATO IV was the first program that use smileys. Here is an example:

confident/happy :-)>

Smileys

by Annika Cremer

I think smile's are very useful, if you want to show your feelings and don't know how you should write it. They are also very practically to write a text, which is more personally and funnier. For example you would become rather write a bad looking smiley if you are angry, as you would say it. And if you write an email, there are more smileys for emotions than words, because it is easier to show your feelings with pictures or smileys than describe it in words.

Chatting

by Ivo Jedlicka

I think chatting is a nice action, which you can do in your free time. You can learn a lot of things, but you can also have a lot of fun. On the Internet, there exist a few chatting programs and also nice chatting sites. I love chatting since I have internet on my computer. I write with my friends on the Msn Messanger and on Icq. I also do webcam conversations with some people. I do my homework with friends and I also help them. Nearly everyone of my friends are chatting. They all love it, because you can write messages in a short time.