In the ”11 Illegal Things You Unknowingly Do on the Internet” article, Clario describes piracy, cyberbullying, dark web access, identity theft, and hacking as the five most serious of these. Piracy is a concern because it infringes on intellectual property rights, resulting in significant financial harm to creators and businesses. Cyberbullying is formally accepted as posing a great threat since it can produce real emotional damage to its victims, in some cases even leading to outcomes such as depression and suicide. The dark web, with its reputation for being widely used for illegal activities ranging from drug trafficking to human exploitation, contributes to the danger of not only being unsafe from the perspective of security but an unsafe practice of itself from a legal perspective as well. Identity theft is very damaging because it can ruin a person’s financial life, destroy their credit, and cause years of recovery work. Finally, hacking private systems for fun or profit violates privacy and can impact businesses or governments and put national security at risk in severe cases. These crimes are offenses because they directly either harm people or seriously undermine the trust and safety online that society must operate. Unlike minor violations, like having shared a Netflix password, such actions carry serious legal consequences and lasting negative effects on people’s lives. It’s important for people who use the internet to understand the real-life effects of what may not feel like very harmful online behavior.

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