Random 'Net' Is A Mess Of A Movie That Gets Almost Everything Wrong About How Internet Works (13 items)

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  (#3) The Characters Are Horrified By Having Their Personal Lives Constantly Monitored

  In one scene, a horrified Angela describes to a friend the reality of the web as she's discovered it:

  They knew, they knew everything about me. They knew. They knew what I ate, they knew what I drank, they knew what movies that I watch, they knew where I was from, they knew what cigarettes I used to smoke, and everything they did, they must have watched on the internet, watched my credit cards. Our whole lives are on the computer. 

  Though this concept was intended to strike fear into the hearts of 90s viewers, one blogger pointed out that it's more or less exactly how Facebook works today. Though it is still unsettling, such realities have become a pretty universally accepted realities of online life.  
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  (#13) The Movie Presents All Cyberterrorism As The Work Of A Guy And His Three Henchmen

  Okay, so maybe Jeff Gregg has a few more guys out there lurking in the shadows. Ultimately though, it seems pretty easy for Angie to take everybody down. Admittedly, she has to resort to a little trickery and even has to take out a guy with a fire extinguisher. Overall, however, her victory is a relatively easy one. After she has destroyed Gatekeeper, thereby restoring her old identity, she pretty much just goes back to life as normal.

  She makes the news as the shamefaced Jeff Gregg is led away in cuffs. However, doesn't it seem like the whole shady network should have been a little larger?
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  (#12) Cyberpunks In The Movie Keep Their Top Secret Passwords In Their Wallets

  Have you finally managed to become entangled in an Illuminati-type organization that plans to overtake the world via an unstoppable computer virus? What better place than your wallet to store a secret password that grants you instant access to world domination?

  As the evil Jack Devlin discovers, it's best to be a little more stealth next time, lest it ultimately leads to your prey's lucky triumph. 
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  (#10) A Simple Virus Can Access And Delete 'Gatekeeper' Across The Board

  Despite the fact that Gregg Microsystems program "Gatekeeper" is supposedly powerful enough to hoodwink computer analysts around the globe, it turns out that it's also pretty easy to remove. The massive virus installed on computers around the globe ultimately meets its end at the hands of a simple virus that Angela debugs in about two minutes at the beginning of the movie.

  Not only is a single keystroke able to wipe out Gatekeeper forever, but it's also able to instantly undo everything the super virus has done.
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  (#4) The Movie Presents Every Internet User As A Secluded Hermit

  When it first came out, The Net played like a cautionary tale about all the dangers that could come along with the internet's rise in popularity. Our heroine, a sexy tech nerd, spends most of her days in front of various screens and rarely leaves the comfort of her own home. Consequently, she becomes so withdrawn from the world that her whole identity is drawn into question when a cyber terrorist rearranges her online identity records. 

  While there's definitely something to be said for the danger of too much time online, it's certainly not the whole story. If anything, technology is now so advanced that it makes it easier to stay in touch with more people in our lives. These days, if online bad guys ever try to change our names, all we'd really have to do would be to ask for a little help on Twitter. Within 10 minutes, we'd have everyone from our fifth grade classmates to our great aunts stepping forward with old Instagram pictures that could help validate our identities. 

  
   
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  (#9) The Entire World Uses The Same Unvetted Cyber Security Software

  When the villain's plans are ultimately revealed, it's discovered they mean to establish a hidden back door to the web by means of a Trojan horse virus hidden in security software. Apparently, this software is so popular that everyone from the government to Wall Street has installed it without question.

  Isn't it a little shady that no one caught on to the evil plan? There really isn't any other software engineer in the world who might have taken a look and been able to detect something fishy before everyone slapped it onto their hard drive? 

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