I hate to post another journal so soon, but something I saw tonight has spooked me to the core.

While chatting with a friend of mine, he showed me his 'sister' in the room. She looked a bit odd I must say, slightly suspicious, especially when she reappeared with no clothing. This was all a big laugh on his part, as he has software that allows him to replace himself on a webcam with various images, including girls, nude or otherwise.

I asked more about this, and apparently it's quite good. Not perfect, but good enough to fool the unwary. It's even customizable to a certain extent, though dammned if I know how it works. After talking to ANOTHER friend, I found he had something similar, that came with his Vista operating system.

What amazed me most was the attitude to all this. It's perfectly fine for people to go around pretending to be young girls or what have you, heck my friend even thought it funny (And if you were deceived and something bad happened to you, it was your own fault, because you had to want to be fooled. Bastard.)

Does it not worry anyone that technology has progressed so far, that now not only can people spam me with pictures of my head photoshopped onto a nude model, but can also send me faked VIDEO in real time? Can we not even trust web cameras now? This is a godsend for pedophiles, especially if they 'iron out' the 'bugs' in this stuff. (And they will, they're often very computer literate.)

Maybe I'm panicking, maybe I'm nuts. But I am worried, very, very VERY worried. And I do NOT think I'm being paranoid.

Be careful out there.