The world is now a computer (internet) world, and for all the benefits we enjoy from the internet, there are also some problems too that we encounter. There is a saying that “there is a bad nut in every palm nut fruit”. I want to focus on some of the problems of internet which seems to be bordering people and also increasing as an alarming proportion. It been practiced by the youth in the country which is locally known as “sakawa”. Internet fraud generally refers to any type of fraud scheme that uses one or more online services - such as chat rooms, e-mail, message boards, or Web sites - to present fraudulent solicitations to prospective victims, to conduct fraudulent transactions, or to transmit the proceeds of fraud to financial institutions or to others connected with the scheme.

Most people go to dating sites and chat with foreigners. Some have the aim to take their street addresses so that they can use other people credit card number to shop at online sites for them so that they will later sent the items they shopped to the country for them because they say is not advisable to shop directly to the country because you can easily be caught. There are some people to which they chat with people abroad and tell them lies and some people sometimes pretends to be ladies and date with gentlemen. Experience as we all know is the best teacher, my experience so far is that is not only the males that engage in such act but 40% percent are females. Some of the female due to the help of the web cam do show their naked body to their client for them to be sent money.

Now a days is easy to find a lot of frauding messages in e-mails, which some of them requires your account numbers whiles other require you to fill some forms not knowing that they all spam made by fraudsters. I once filled a certain forms by US LOTTERY which i followed for a while but it got to a time that they were demanding an account number so i even decided to open an account for that and a teacher advised on the latest game in town which is all about deceiving people and taking their money and disappear as sung in the song entitled “I go chop your dollar and disappear” by Osuofia a Nigerian actor that i admire most. So I terminated it and deleted any message I see in my mail that i don’t recognise the sender because they all forms of software threats.

Again i have come to notice that some also use “juju” to deceive people on the net but i didn’t believe this until I experienced one at a cafe. I saw a boy with a ring which he call it “you go do” meaning if he tells you something weather you like it or not you must do it and it was true because he was chatting with someone but the person refuses to grant his needs and the person accepted to do what the boys needs immediately when he putted up his so called “you go do” and some also scan people’s photos and print them and take them to “juju” to chant them so that they will agree to provide them their selfish wants.

I think is bad sitting down and looking at the youth in the country to practice such act. I heard from some of the media reporting that are some police who will be checking internet cafes to arrest anyone seen in such act but i think that need not be the case. I think they should be informed and police and other protection agencies should rush to internet cafes to search on PC and individual to arrest those practising such unlawful act and proper investigations should be made to arrest those in companies like Western Union and Post Office whom encourages the youth because they release their goods for them and charge them high interest because a “ a stitch in times saves nine”

The writer is a form one student of the Ebenezer Senior High School-Accra (amoadu_jnr@yahoo.com)