Losing Privacy

Another Internet danger comes in the form of losing your privacy by giving out personal information to strangers, such your address, phone numbers, credit card numbers,  and so on.

Even a child who is reasonably cautious but innocently shares whether they're home alone or not, what time Mom and Dad come home from work, what kind of activities they're involved in at school, can unwittingly let strangers know when they're home alone or when they're at the ballpark.  

Some websites require you to login to their site, asking you for certain personal information which is stored in both their computer and yours.  The next time you visit their site, they know who you are and have access to all your associated information, even if you don't give them the information the second time.  I'll talk about how this works in the section on "cookie" files.

Losing Time

The Internet is so huge it's easy to begin a simple search for one topic and find yourself hours later reading something totally unrelated on a website literally half-way around the world.

I just read about one man who was thankful to see his son working so much on the computer and not spending so much time watching TV.  He found out later when his son was arrested for building explosives that even more educational than his father thought!

It's important for parents and kids alike to not use the Internet as another form of escape from family life and other responsibilities.

Finding Misleading Information

With all the voices speaking out over the Internet, there are a fair number of voices that have no concept of Truth with a capital "T" as found in God's Word.

Many websites promote values that are inconsistent with those outlined in the Bible, and they treat such values as normative.  This can mislead both kids and adults into all kinds of wrong thinking that will put them on a path of death and destruction rather than on the path of abundant life that Christ offers us.

I work frequently with people who come to my Internet ministry who have been persuaded into thinking homosexuality and adultery are OK.  Often it's because they've spent more time reading about the topic on sex sites than they've spent reading God's Word.  When the truth finally starts to sink in that they've headed down the wrong path, they come to our ministry to find the way back to the path of life.

When reading any website, whether Christian or non-Christian, remember the phrase "caveat emptor!" (let the buyer beware!)  As Christians, we need to pass everything we read through the test of God's word to distill the truth.