Did porn help to grow the internet?

Have you ever wondered why the internet took off so quickly? No one was using the internet one minute, and the next, everyone was talking about it. One reason I think the internet grew so quickly was porn.?

Let's not kid ourselves. When Freeserve took off, for the first time, people could do whatever they wanted, and one of the things people had always wanted to do was secretly look at porn without being caught. I know this because I used to look at what people were searching for on the search engine. A lot of the top 20 search terms were porn related.?

We didn't advertise or promote porn, but there was lots of porn on the internet, and people knew it. And if that's what they wanted, we couldn't stop them, and boy, there was a lot of porn out there. It's one of the things that caused the internet to snowball, and people talked about it with their friends at work and in bars. They talked about it everywhere.??

Soon after, dating sites were another big thing to take off, and many new sites appeared from nowhere. I'm sure many happy couples would not have met without the internet.

But the big problem was that people didn't understand two crucial features of the browser - "autofill and autocomplete." These features are designed to save you time and memory. Autofill remembers things like usernames and passwords. If you don't remember something, the browser remembers it for you. It automatically completes it the next time you type it in a box. And autocomplete completes words you might have typed into a box last time. Brilliant, we've all used these features, but they can also catch you out.

Many people got caught out with a feature designed to save them time. At Freeserve, we heard all sorts of funny and embarrassing stories from customers.?

Here are some funny stories that people shared with us:

• When returning from work one day, I was greeted with an icy welcome and the rather tricky question, "did you find any dirty college sluts then?"
• Just been on my parent's computer....type in A, and auto complete comes up with "Ann summers sex toys".
• Last year, my sister was using my (single) Dad's computer and tried searching for her name (which begins with "V"). Good old auto-complete came up with "Viagra". It turns out that my dad has been buying Viagra.
• A good friend of mine recently found out his girlfriend was pregnant when auto-complete came up with 'symptoms of pregnancy'.
• Auto completed my husband's ex-girlfriend's website on my computer.
• My friend gave his girlfriend his old computer. He makes sure to delete all the old "naughty bits" from there but forgets to turn off auto-complete. They both use the same webmail portal. So, when she checks her email for the first time, HIS info is already in the login box, along with his auto-completed password. Now, he's faithful, but that doesn't stop him from chatting up a bird or two (or ten) now and then. Curiosity getting the better of her, she spends the next two days going over his "In and Out box," correlating emails from women to a timeline of their relationship, plotting graphs, charts, etc. She then invites him over to her place for what I imagine was the WORST Powerpoint presentation of his life. Needless to say, she became his Ex-girlfriend.
• "I was using my Mum's work computer. I saw she had been searching for divorce advice. Yes, I found out that my parents were getting divorced before my dad did."
• "I just tried auto-complete on my wife's computer and got: Hitler, Nazi marching, air raid, blitzkrieg, infantry German, Nazi rally. I'd be quite worried if she weren't a history teacher."
• While my friend went to the toilet, I quickly checked his Internet history. I noticed some adult dating sites but didn't click on them. When he came back, I confronted him in a teasing way. He didn't know what I was talking about, so I showed him his Internet history and clicked on one of the sites. Auto-fill was on because all the login info was already filled in. It was then that we both came to a shocking discovery after logging in... It was not my friend, but his MUM! visiting adult sites! Very embarrassing for him.?

So, the lesson for us all is to learn about the "autofill and autocomplete" features, and the next time you want to look at certain sites, use the privacy feature that is now built into all browsers. Happy surfing.