YMMV / The Net (1995)

• Hilarious in Hindsight: In one scene, Angela uses a website to order a pizza. This is meant to emphasize how isolated she is, but nowadays, this is exactly how millions of people do it.
• Paranoia Fuel:
  • For the internet age, yo. The bad guys know what cigarettes Angela used to smoke!
  • The bad guys tamper with hospital records, leaving Alan to be killed by an insulin overdose after he's listed as a diabetic. Considering that the vast majority of hospitals use electronic medical records these days, there is a very real possibility of something like this happening.
• Not So Crazy Anymore: Yes, the concept of identity theft is terrifying, and the film played on those fears expertly. However:
  • Prediction: One day you're an upstanding citizen, the next you're a wanted criminal! Apparently-sane law enforcement officials will chase you down and brutalize you simply because some stupid, soulless machine tells them to, and if you insist the machine is wrong, they will call you a liar if not an outright lunatic!
  • Reality: The impact it has on one's life isn't much worse than a moderate car accident. Everyone, including the police, knows it can happen, and numerous agencies will seriously investigate claims (and they're usually a lot less intricate than the film's), as one can't exactly act as a productive member of society whose identity is worth stealing if a criminal is abusing their identity. You shouldn't act too suspiciously after it happens, but they will be sympathetic (if occasionally Obstructively Bureaucratic), and one can usually get one's life back in order after a year or two.
• Unintentional Period Piece: While its warnings about identity theft and cyber-terrorism have stood the test of time, the computer technology (floppy disks, bulky cellphones, etc) sets the film firmly in the '90s. The fact that a key plot point is someone committing suicide after being diagnosed with AIDS sets it during the time when the disease was still considered an automatic death sentence. One line of dialog hints that the subject would have been especially distraught about this diagnosis being made public because of his homophobia - at the time the disease was still widely viewed as only affecting gay men.
• Values Resonance: A cautionary tale about the dangers of surfing the internet and putting your information online was, sadly, rather prescient, as the issue has only got worse the more ubiquitous the internet has become.

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