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

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  (#1) The Movie Has A Pretty Extreme Idea Of What 'Identity Theft' Is

  One day, you're a bit of hermit, chatting up strangers online and working from home. The next, it's as if you've never even existed at all. What caused the big shift? Little more than a few mouse clicks by a secret online shadow organization. Such is the plight of The Net's Angela Bennett when cyber terrorists change her online identification records. 

  In its attempt to put the fear of this new, subversive, and unknown technology into would-be internet users everywhere, The Net presents a pretty fragile version of identity security. Though identity theft can and does happen, it's virtually impossible to erase every trace of yourself from the web - even if you want to. If someone were able to pull it off, many social media companies today keep their own records of a person's profile - even if that person deleted their account. Thoroughly wiping someone's entire existence off the internet would take weeks or months just to track who has access to your information.

   
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  (#2) The Website Designs In The Movie Are Actually Better Than Actual Websites In 1995 

  Though most viewers today probably consider the websites in the film to be ancient-looking, they were considered revolutionary back in the day. When the movie debuted in the mid-90s, most websites were still pretty archaic compared to modern standards. 

  While someone seeing the film for the first time today would either take no notice of Angela ordering pizza or booking airline tickets online, or maybe comment on how dated the websites look, these scenes were initially intended to be innovative. When the movie was first released, simplified user interfaces and the conveniences that come with them were previously unseen and were intended to serve as hilarious novelties. 
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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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  (#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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  (#5) The IP Address In The Film Is Impossible To Have

  When Angela finally reaches the super suspenseful scene where she's able to find Praetorian's IP address, it's revealed to be 23.75.345.200. Though you'd have to have an eagle eye and a knowledge of computers to notice, such an IP is actually impossible because no IP  can contain numbers greater than 255.

  Granted, this one may have been used on purpose to avoid being sued by somebody who actually used it in real life. 

   

   

   

   
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  (#6) Computers In The Film Can Erase People But Not Trace Cell Phones

  At various points throughout the movie, we're introduced to the marvels and horrors that the internet was capable of. Changing medical records, deleting identities, and even crashing planes seemed to be the norm for those with the knowledge and capabilities.

  As remarked on by one character, however, technology still remained utterly clueless when it came to tracing cell phone calls. 
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  (#7) Everyone In The Film Physically Delivers Floppy Disks, Despite Having The Internet

  Apparently, back in the 1990s, there was a whole lot of FedEx-ing going on between giants in the tech world. Though Angela works from home, she relies solely on the phone and FedEx to communicate with and trade info with her clients at Cathedral Software. 

  Though email may not have been the norm it was today, couldn't Angela and her tech company cohorts have utilized the early versions that existed back then? Basically, the movie asks us to believe that there's a virus capable of backdooring itself into every online record that proves we exist, but there is no form of digital messaging or communication through the internet.
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  (#8) Chat Rooms Are Populated By A Few Recluses

  Chat room users in the film are limited to about the five most lonely people in the entire world. There definitely aren't many people in the chat room, as evidenced by the fact that they're all able to score super easy handles like "Angel" and "CyberBob." No one is forced to resort to clever misspellings of their actual name mixed with numbers from their childhood address.

  Thankfully, we can breathe a sigh of relief that chat rooms never managed to get quite as obnoxious as the ones in the world of The Net. Poor Angela is forced to listen to everything every user types as it is relayed in a terrifying cyber voice, which is a little odd and ultimately unnecessary, considering she can clearly read their comments on the screen. 
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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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  (#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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  (#11) The Characters Think Games Can't Get More Violent Than 'Wolfenstein 3D'

  "The game is literally as bloody as it gets," states Angela's boss as she plays through a game called Wolfenstein 3D. One can only imagine that cartoon soldiers getting blown away was considered violent and edgy back in the day. These days, however, you can't help but imagine what the same characters would have thought of a solid copy of Grand Theft Auto.

  Since then, video games have gotten increasingly better graphics and more violent.
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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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  (#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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