Random Scary Internet Conspiracy Theories (15 items)

• 

  (#10) Net Neutrality Is a Government Takeover of the Internet

  Is the 2015 Net Neutrality legislation, which will ensure the Internet is regulated like a utility, as opposed allowing service providers to throttle down speeds or block access to certain sites, actually a backdoor takeover by the government?

  Many opponents of the legislation believe so, calling it a “federal takeover” and a draconian measure that will lead to bureaucrats deciding where you can do, what you can download and what speeds at which you can do it. However, net neutrality supporters see it as the opposite of this – a codified continuation of the free and open Internet we have now.
  
• 

  (#9) The Internet Kill Switch

  The idea of one single command bringing down the entire Internet has been referenced in both national security and conspiracy theory circles. Language written in the Communications Act of 1934 gives the president the authority to suspend radio and telephone communications in a time of national crisis. Proponents of a “kill switch” for the Internet contend that there might be a time when such a crisis might prompt the shutdown of the Internet.

  Its opponents believe that a power-mad president could activate the kill switch to prevent dissent and nationalize the flow of information – and point to countries like Egypt where the exact same thing has happened. Such a kill switch doesn’t actually exist in the US, despite several years of debate about it.
  
• 

  (#13) China Is Taking Over the Internet

  Conspiracy theorists lit up with news in March 2014 that President Obama was going to be handing control of the Internet over to hostile regimes in Russia and China. The crux of the complaint was that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which is the non-profit that controls Internet domain names and assignments, was going to become an independent corporation, free of US oversight, when its contract with the US government expired in late 2015.

  While Obama opponents and one-world-government types saw it as an unacceptable breach of US sovereignty, others pointed out that America does not, in fact, run the Internet.
  
• 

  (#1) Webcam Hacking

  Anyone creepy enough and at least somewhat technologically minded could remotely turn on your laptop’s webcam, giving him or her the ability to record you doing whatever you’re doing. A Remote Administration Tool (RAT) can be introduced on a computer through a phishing email or malware, giving a hacker the ability to move items around on your desktop, close what you’re working on, or open your DVD drive.

  It also gives creeps the ability to watch women working at their computers through their webcams, which they won’t realize are on. RAT-ers conspire to find “slaves” they can hack into, determine which laptops don’t have lights to indicate their webcams are on, and generally say and do creepy stuff. Makes you want to turn your computer off and live in the woods.
• 

  (#8) Text That Deletes Itself

  British author Luke Harding was well into writing The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man, when something bizarre happened to his work: it began to erase itself before his very eyes. In an editorial in The Guardian, Harding wrote,

  “The paragraph I had just written began to self-delete. The cursor moved rapidly from the left, gobbling text. I watched my words vanish. When I tried to close my OpenOffice file the keyboard began flashing and bleeping.

  "Over the next few weeks these incidents of remote deletion happened several times. There was no fixed pattern but it tended to occur when I wrote disparagingly of the NSA.”

  Skeptics pointed out a number of holes in Harding’s story, and pointed out that he probably just got his delete key stuck. Or maybe that's what the NSA wants you to think.
  
• 

  (#14) Obama Is Going to Ban Internet Conspiracy Theories

  Did a high-ranking official in the Obama administration really say that he sought to ban the dissemination of conspiracy theories on the Internet? Sort of. Cass Sunstein was head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the White House for three years, where he was seen as Obama’s “information czar” and someone who wanted to exert socialist control over the American population.

  But before this, he had authored a paper called “Conspiracy Theories” that stated one way a government could get a handle on out of control speculation would be to simply ban it.

  Sunstein never actually advocated that the Obama administration do this, nor would they have any legal justification to do so. Plus, one look at the Internet proves that conspiracy theories aren’t going anywhere, no matter what any paper says.

New Random Displays    Display All By Ranking