Well obviously the bad effect for the hacker is that it is illegal and he could face imprisonment. However looking at the bigger picture and what the bad effects are for those being hacked, the following comes to mind
- Hackers can gain access to private files containing bank details etc. So it is possible for the victim to lose a substantial amount of money
- on a larger scale, over a three day period back in 2000 some of the biggest names on the worldwide web had their sites hacked and were knocked out of service.
- It was reported that in 1995 that hackers had tried to invade the Defense Departments computer 250,000 times and that they had succeeded around 65% of the time
Obviously not all hackers are bad, some hackers are employed by organisations to protect them.
Interestingly the term 'hacker' was first used in the mid 1960s. It described a hacker as someone who hacked out computer code - a programmer. Hackers were people who could see new ways to use computers, people who could build small applications and operating systems that no one else could imagine
- In this sense, people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were all hackers in that they saw the potential of computers and found ways to achieve that potential.
