Internet is an amazing invention. In fact, it won’t be exaggeration to say that it is one of the best inventions of all times. However, there are a number of inventions that were conceived with the help of the internet, but turned out to be completely rubbish. Today, we will take a look at five such inventions that gave internet a bad name.
1. Pop-Up Ad
The initial purpose behind inventing pop-ups was to embed ads on homepages of websites. Pop ups were not supposed to be as intrusive as they became with time. Ethan Zukckerman, the inventor of pop-ups said that he believes that advertising is the original sin of the web. However, his statement doesn’t change the fact that he created something that has ruined and is ruining the experience of countless users on a daily basis. Unfortunately, not even anti-virus can prevent these annoying pop-ups from showing up.
2. Virus
The first ever virus was created by Rich Skrenta. The virus was called Elk Cloner and was created in 1982 as a practical joke by the ninth grader. The purpose of the virus was to get on to all the disks and infiltrate the chips. Since then, countless versions of viruses have been developed to attack internet users as well as non-internet mobile phones and several other devices. Fortunately, a VPN tool, can prevent targeted virus attacks.
3. Captchas
Captchas were invented to help prevent unwanted traffic, mostly bots. However, these captchas became very problematic later on, especially for people with dyslexia and sight problems. The worst part is that most of the times the audio captchas are even harder to decode. The captcha was invented by Manuel Blum, John Langford and Luis Von Ahn. Today, around 500,000 hours are being spent by humans trying to prove they are human.
4. Regional Censorship
Georg Bodenhausen, the man who set the stage for regional censorship, might have not known how far this geo-blocking will go. Through the Patent Cooperation Treaty and the Berne Convention, internet service providers became obliged to limit their legal liabilities in case of a user breaking any copyright law. Today, geo-restrictions have gone so far that a majority of users consider going online via VPN software to change their IPs, mostly through PureVPN
5. Spam
Gary Thuerk sent an advertisement email to 393 people. The email was received negatively, but it managed to get him some sales. This method was tried again after 10 years. Unfortunately, today, the number of spam e-mails in each user’s mail box is around 50 percent or more than legitimate e-mails. According to the Message Anti-Abuse Working Group, up to 90 percent of all e-mails sent in 2011 were spam, and that’s not including the emails we received from our bosses.
Everything has its pros and cons. We just discussed about the cons of the internet in this 5 Most Hated Internet Innovations of All Times list. Let’s hope we don’t have to see any more controversial and annoying innovations ruining the internet even more.
1. Pop-Up Ad
The initial purpose behind inventing pop-ups was to embed ads on homepages of websites. Pop ups were not supposed to be as intrusive as they became with time. Ethan Zukckerman, the inventor of pop-ups said that he believes that advertising is the original sin of the web. However, his statement doesn’t change the fact that he created something that has ruined and is ruining the experience of countless users on a daily basis. Unfortunately, not even anti-virus can prevent these annoying pop-ups from showing up.
2. Virus
The first ever virus was created by Rich Skrenta. The virus was called Elk Cloner and was created in 1982 as a practical joke by the ninth grader. The purpose of the virus was to get on to all the disks and infiltrate the chips. Since then, countless versions of viruses have been developed to attack internet users as well as non-internet mobile phones and several other devices. Fortunately, a VPN tool, can prevent targeted virus attacks.
3. Captchas
Captchas were invented to help prevent unwanted traffic, mostly bots. However, these captchas became very problematic later on, especially for people with dyslexia and sight problems. The worst part is that most of the times the audio captchas are even harder to decode. The captcha was invented by Manuel Blum, John Langford and Luis Von Ahn. Today, around 500,000 hours are being spent by humans trying to prove they are human.
4. Regional Censorship
Georg Bodenhausen, the man who set the stage for regional censorship, might have not known how far this geo-blocking will go. Through the Patent Cooperation Treaty and the Berne Convention, internet service providers became obliged to limit their legal liabilities in case of a user breaking any copyright law. Today, geo-restrictions have gone so far that a majority of users consider going online via VPN software to change their IPs, mostly through PureVPN
5. Spam
Gary Thuerk sent an advertisement email to 393 people. The email was received negatively, but it managed to get him some sales. This method was tried again after 10 years. Unfortunately, today, the number of spam e-mails in each user’s mail box is around 50 percent or more than legitimate e-mails. According to the Message Anti-Abuse Working Group, up to 90 percent of all e-mails sent in 2011 were spam, and that’s not including the emails we received from our bosses.
Everything has its pros and cons. We just discussed about the cons of the internet in this 5 Most Hated Internet Innovations of All Times list. Let’s hope we don’t have to see any more controversial and annoying innovations ruining the internet even more.