Andriy Slynchuk listed eleven behaviors online users engage in that may be considered illegal. These violations are often committed unknowingly or out of ignorance. However, ignorance is not enough to excuse a crime. These eleven illegal acts include faking online identities, using other’s internet connections without permission, collecting information about children, recording VoIP calls without consent, sharing personal data of others, using copyrighted images, extracting YouTube audio, bullying, and using unofficial streaming and torrent services. The top five most serious violations include collecting information about children, sharing other’s personal data, falsely identifying online, using unofficial streaming services, and bullying. Here are the violations below from least in severity to five being the greatest.

  1. Using unofficial streaming services can leave the door open for your information to be stolen and result in a lawsuit, which will cost more than just paying for the film.
  2. Sharing other’s personal data such as sharing passwords, addresses, or photos of others without their permission can place someone in danger. Sharing an address and a photo of an individual online tells everyone with access to the internet where that individual resides. Address and photo sharing can directly put an individual in physical harm unintentionally.
  3. Cyberbullying has become more widespread since I have graduated in 2015. Cyberbullying has directly correlated with the increase in teen suicides. Cyberbullying can be treated as both a civil and criminal matter.
  4. Faking online identity can be a manipulative tool for financial gain. Catfishing has become popularized and normalized online. However, faking online identities has aided in crimes against unsupervised children online. Just as we teach children stranger danger in the real world, those same concepts should be applied to online strangers.
  5. Lastly, collecting information about children I think is the most serious offense. Children do not have fully developed brains and lack in decision-making ability to decern what is okay to be shared and what is not. Perpetrators are exploiting children’s information can directly and indirectly put children in harm’s way.

Reference:

Slynchuk, A. (2021, June 1). 11 Illegal Things You Unknowingly Do on the Internet. Claro.co. Retrieved November 28, 2022, from https://clario.co/blog/illegal-things-you-do-online/

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