Half of Japanese Scared of Using Internet

The English version of this article seems rather incomplete, as it didn’t give details like the number of people who were surveyed which were in the Japanese version.

Basically,
-5000 people over 20 were targeted for the poll and 3006 people answered
-In regards to particular online hazards that the respondents felt scared/worried or uneasy about, 66.5% picked “leaking of personal information by computer viruses”, 52.1% picked “unauthorized usage of passwords” (by hacking), and 50.5% picked “overhead fees/unfair charges”.
-In regards to particular Internet crimes that the respondents wanted police to be more in control of, 64.5% picked “children in sex crime-like crimes” (not sure how to translate this part, the original Japanese was 児童が性的犯罪にあう犯罪 and I’m not sure if にあう here is 似合う or に会う), 56.4% picked “the display of obscene images”, and 53.3% picked “murder or bomb threats”.

I’d be scared of the internet too if it had a face and talked to me directly like in the drawing above.

About 6 years ago I bought a laptop for my in-laws.

Both ma and pa are in their 60′s. Over two evenings – about 2-3 hours, I gave them a quick introduction on how to setup the laptop and navigate round the pc. They connected to the Internet (not my fault guv…). On the second night I gave them some personal security advice about using the Internet, set-up a hotmail account for them and showed them some search engines. – That’s it!

They took to it like a duck to water. Over the past few years, they have attended public courses for word-processing, how to use the internet … and about five or six other courses.

Last week my father-in-law bought a custom (design your own and we build it) laptop on line. It’s to be used to communicate – vid-link, with his wife while he’s away on business trips.

It gives them so much peace of mind to see each other when they’re apart.

All Japanese people need is a little help to get started – just like the rest of us. I’m proud of ‘em.