From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The
internet is the biggest world-wide communication
network of computers. It has millions of smaller domestic,
academic,
business, and
government networks, which together carry many different kinds of
information. The term is sometimes abbreviated as "the net". The
World Wide Web is one of its biggest services. It is used by a few billion people all over the world.
Today, people can pay
money to access the internet from
internet service providers. Some services on the Internet cost nothing to use. Sometimes people who offer these free services use
advertising to make money from them.
The second biggest use of the internet is to send and receive e-mail. E-mail is private and goes from one
user to another.
Instant messaging (such as
AIM or
ICQ) is similar to email, but allows two or more people to chat to each other much faster.
Some governments think the Internet is a bad thing, and block all or part of it. For example, the Chinese government thinks that Wikipedia is bad. Many times no one in
China can read it or add to it.
[2] Some
parents block parts of the internet they think are bad for
children to see. Well-known examples of the whole internet being blocked are in
North Korea[3]and
Myanmar.
The internet can also be dangerous. People sometimes use it to spread lies or other people's secrets or dangerously bad advice. When someone sends information through the internet, sometimes other people can read it even when they are not supposed to. For example,
Facebook has had some problems with
privacy settings. A person can post information on a website, but this is often a bad idea unless the person is very sure of what they are doing. One way to check for a secure website is to make sure the
URL starts with https:// instead of http://. This means it is secured so other people cannot read information while it is being sent. However, it does not mean the website will do things to keep it safe.
