Have people become too conditioned – mainly through watching television – to also believe whatever appears on their monitor?
Schneier: Yes, but it’s not television. People know the Internet is not television. People believe what they see on the Net not because of television but because of the trappings of reality. So when you got to BT.com, you see the BT logo, the BT font, the PR material, and you’ll think, yeah, it’s BT, like when you go to your bank, you see the logo, the tellers. That’s real, that’s expensive stuff. On the web, it could be a fake BT.com site and you don’t notice because it’s trivially easy to copy. So people do believe what they see on the Internet, not because of television, but because the Internet has the trappings of the real world. So all of those social cues you get to know to trust something – it looks professional, nothing’s misspelled, you see those things and you believe it’s real. So yes, people are conditioned to accept it but it’s from a whole variety of social conditioning. Do you think people will ever gain a greater suspicion of the Internet? Schneier: Younger people have
