Save for maybe cat videos, conspiracy theories are the bread and butter of the Internet. But what about conspiracy theories ABOUT the Internet? There are plenty of scary theories floating around conspiracy circles that have major implications for the ever increasingly digital lives we lead. These conspiracies about the Internet, hacking, and other forms of digital crimes will have you seriously considering ditching all your tech gadgets and moving to an isolated cabin in the woods, once and for all.
Whether it's a governmental takeover, massive censorship, Internet-enabled devices being taken over, or giant data storage systems meant to track everything you look at, there are plenty of conspiracies simply about the internet to keep you awake at night - and away from your smartphone. Edward Snowden to high level government officials around the world, plenty of people are worried about these Internet conspiracies, and soon you will be too!
These conspiracy theories are all related to cyberspace, data storage, smart phones, and who actually controls the Internet. Be sure to read them on an old desktop that the NSA can't possibly hack into and upvote the scary Internet theories that have you most frantically clearing your browser history.
15 Internet Conspiracy Theories That Are Actually Scary,
Text That Deletes Itself
British author Luke Harding was well into writing The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man, when something bizarre happened to his work: it began to erase itself before his very eyes. In an editorial in The Guardian, Harding wrote,
“The paragraph I had just written began to self-delete. The cursor moved rapidly from the left, gobbling text. I watched my words vanish. When I tried to close my OpenOffice file the keyboard began flashing and bleeping.
"Over the next few weeks these incidents of remote deletion happened several times. There was no fixed pattern but it tended to occur when I wrote disparagingly of the NSA.”
Skeptics pointed out a number of holes in Harding’s story, and pointed out that he probably just got his delete key stuck. Or maybe that's what the NSA wants you to think.
Remote Car Hacking
With “the Internet of things” becoming more and more of a reality, it’s not a nightmare scenario for hackers to be able to insert code into the brakes, engine, or locks of an Internet-enabled car and take control of it. According to former White House counter-terrorism head Richard Clarke, “There is reason to believe that intelligence agencies for major powers - including the United States - know how to remotely seize control of a car.”
Whether this has ever actually happened is debatable – some conspiracy theorists believe journalist Michael Hastings was “taken out” in one such attack, though evidence doesn’t support it. But clearly there is at least a theoretical, if not an easily achieved, way to use the Internet to take control of a car and make it do things its rightful owner doesn't want it to do.
The Internet Kill Switch
The idea of one single command bringing down the entire Internet has been referenced in both national security and conspiracy theory circles. Language written in the Communications Act of 1934 gives the president the authority to suspend radio and telephone communications in a time of national crisis. Proponents of a “kill switch” for the Internet contend that there might be a time when such a crisis might prompt the shutdown of the Internet.
Its opponents believe that a power-mad president could activate the kill switch to prevent dissent and nationalize the flow of information – and point to countries like Egypt where the exact same thing has happened. Such a kill switch doesn’t actually exist in the US, despite several years of debate about it.
The TV That Listens to You
February 2015 brought a chilling revelation from Samsung – that their new, Internet-enabled televisions come with a voice activated system. But in order to get it to work, the TV has to hear whatever you say – and that the information can be recorded and downloaded to a third-party server. This innovation brought to mind the telescreens from 1984, where government officials could watch and listen to the proles, ensuring no thoughtcrimes were committed.
Samsung insisted that they weren’t collecting or selling data, and that the TV had an icon that indicated the voice feature had been activated. But it seemed like yet another blow to privacy and information security. It also confirmed that Yakov Smirnoff joke about how “in Soviet Union, TV watches you!”
Webcam Hacking
Anyone creepy enough and at least somewhat technologically minded could remotely turn on your laptop’s webcam, giving him or her the ability to record you doing whatever you’re doing. A Remote Administration Tool (RAT) can be introduced on a computer through a phishing email or malware, giving a hacker the ability to move items around on your desktop, close what you’re working on, or open your DVD drive.
It also gives creeps the ability to watch women working at their computers through their webcams, which they won’t realize are on. RAT-ers conspire to find “slaves” they can hack into, determine which laptops don’t have lights to indicate their webcams are on, and generally say and do creepy stuff. Makes you want to turn your computer off and live in the woods.
Utah Data Center
A gigantic data storage center designed to track everything you do in cyberspace, located in the middle of nowhere with a creepy name and an officially classified mission? Sounds like the stuff of conspiracy theorist nightmares – but it’s a real place. Officially named the Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center, but better-known as the Utah Data Center, this million square foot complex cost over $2 billion to build, and can store as much as 12 billion gigabytes of information.
What information does it store? If you believe the Edward Snowden disclosures, everything you do on the Internet and a log of every call you make or receive. Reactions to the sheer size, scope, and creepiness of the Utah Data Center have included protestors flying drones over it and Utah lawmakers proposing bills to cut off its water supply – all activities that are no doubt being logged and stored in the Utah Data Center.
The Great Firewall of China
China’s Golden Shield Project is an ongoing effort to track, watch, and log everything China’s billion citizens do on the Internet – when it’s not simply blocking them from going where they want. The “Great Firewall of China” prohibits users from doing anything that might “harm national security; disclose state secrets; or injure the interests of the state or society, […] create, replicate, retrieve, or transmit information that incites resistance to the PRC Constitution, laws, or administrative regulations; promote the overthrow of the government or socialist system; undermines national unification; distort the truth, spread rumors, or destroy social order; or provide sexually suggestive material or encourage gambling, violence, or murder.”
Needless to say, this can be interpreted to be just about anything, leading to an odious amount of censorship.
MonsterMind
Buried in the disclosures made by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was information about an experimental cyber defense system that could autonomously neutralize and retaliate against foreign cyber attacks against the US. Nicknamed MonsterMind, it’s supposedly the project that caused Snowden to make his initial disclosures, as he was disturbed by the idea of a self-regulating system that has no oversight and can fight back against anything that it deems a threat. Theoretically, it could be turned against ordinary citizens, or decide it doesn’t want to do what it’s supposed to do and rain nuclear missiles on all of us. Or something.
Proponents of the idea believe that a “cyber missile defense system” is exactly what we should be investing in, stopping hack attacks before they happen, rather than playing catch-up and cleaning up the damage.
Superfish
Your computer almost certainly either has been or is currently infected with some kind of ad-serving malware that broadcasts your personal information and passwords, and makes you vulnerable to serious hack attacks. This is the lesson of the Superfish debacle, when computer manufacturer Lenovo took a very public punch in the mouth after being exposed for installing this visual shopping adware on its recent computer models.
Users were unaware that the software had been included, or that it was making it possible for ads to be placed on secure websites, and passwords from those sites to be intercepted and downloaded by third parties. The risk was so great that the Department of Homeland Security advised users uninstall the root kit and delete its accompanying certificates, due to the risk it posed for an organized cyber attack from another country.
Telematics
Employers have long had the ability to monitor every keystroke their employees make on work computers. But the fairly new data science of telematics takes that monitoring one step further. It allows your boss to calculate and develop metrics for every single thing you do at work, developing algorithms for service oriented positions that can determine how much you work, what you make, and even if you keep your job.
Telematics monitors, logs, and tracks how long it takes to edit a document, serve a customer, whether you upsell, if you have to ring something up twice, or even how many steps you take in an office. All of this data is stored, and can easily be hacked into – when it’s not being used to determine your workplace destiny.