Camhoes, Internet come to life after dark, creating good business

Kelik Tunomo, Contributor, Boston

Do you know where your children are after dark?

You will probably be freaking out if you don't know. In fact, you'll probably freak out even more when you find out what happens after dark on the Internet? Wait a minute; the sun never sets on the Internet, right?

That's true, but the after-dark lifestyle is growing fast, catching up with the offline lifestyle. That lifestyle creates good business too. Despite the complexities of the Internet, it does not take a genius to start making big bucks.

The Internet is a huge land of nothingness. You may post the most important thing to mankind on your website without getting any attention because there are zillions of other "most important things" on the Internet.

A lot of people crave attention. Some end up being Internet exhibitionists, termed camhoes. Who are these camhoes? These are people who use Internet webcams, regularly exposing their private parts and indulging in private bedroom activities.

What these camhoes get up to can consist of individual, couple or even group activities. And not a few of them are Indonesians!

This is the story of my encounters with some Indonesian camhoes. The names are not their actual names nor their screen names. I saw their "nicks" (screen names), with samples of their shows, posted on a bulletin board.

When I first greeted BT, she directly asked me whether I was in Indonesia. Unfortunately I was not. She refused to talk to me because I was not geographically accessible.

I suspect that her reason was that she was unlikely to gain any financial reward. Finally, I found Lisa. Lisa meant business from the first encounter.

She did not allow me to see her show. She posted a status sign saying that she would only approve messages sent to her that did not specify what was being sent.

She ignored me all night long. After a few encounters she finally allowed me to see the show. The first time she asked me to use a "nick" (screen name), I later discovered that what she had down was to get me to log in to a type of server that relayed her show.

Holy smoke, I underestimated her. How could this woman know this kind of stuff?

My amazement at her did not stop there. She finally realized that I was an intruder because she had mistakenly allowed me to view her show several times.

She greeted me and nicely asked me to send her a pin code for prepaid GSM services before she would continue her show. I was lucky because I believe she did not have much of an audience that night.

She answered a lot of my questions. She used a GPRS (General Packet Radio System) service to connect to the Internet. This kind of connection is common among tech-savvy road warriors or mobile businesspeople.

She said she needed the pin codes from her so-called members to pay for the connection. She can host up to thirty viewers during one show.

That means she can earn between Rp 1.5 million and Rp 3 million from a show because a pin credit can be worth between Rp 50,000 and Rp 100,000.

I encountered others, too. Although I seldom meet Dewi online, she grants requests easily. She likes to hear compliments and rude words. Though it is hard to get her to open up, she is a pure exhibitionist. You may be startled by this fact. What follows may startle you even more.

This is the point where you should hold your breath. Of all the "nicks" I got, many of them are not camhoes. They are just chatters using public computers in Internet cafes or using their personal computers.

They just like being watched by others while giggling over their friends' remarks on the chat window, like Wati and Gadis. I got their "nicks" from the bulletin board, with their webcam images showing them in mid performance.

However, I did not see them in action. I started nice with Wati but when I got to the point of asking her to do a show, she blocked me permanently.

Then I did a background check by looking into their online profiles. To my amazement, one, out of 28 "nicks" I found, uses 2 different "nicks" to do the show. Two "nicks" belong to two mature women who like flirting on the Internet and displaying themselves on a webcam wearing sexy outfits.

They never opened up. Eleven "nicks" were occasionally online with webcams, the rest were never online. Four "nicks" are the victims of, I assume, ex-boyfriends.

They showed some of their private parts. One of them, Ananda, showed it from the office because she was still using her uniform with her name tag.

The rest were probably the victims of bad jokes or just plain cruel revenge. Gladys' captured picture is different to her profile picture.

Another story concerns Ikov, a 27-year-old male. He had to deal with a sudden rush of people trying to access him for about two months because his cam captured a hot woman showing her private parts.

So what have you learned today? The Internet is like a knife: you can use it as a weapon to kill somebody. You can also use it to prepare your dinner.

I once came across a "spam" message that advertised a porn site. The site had 900 gigabytes of pornography. Based on the assumption that most Indonesian Internet connections are 56 kilobytes per second, the site would take approximately 200 days to download.

Now compare it to the World Wide Learn site that hosts a vast stock of free learning materials -- from learning Swahili to Web design. If you wake up one day and decide to use the Internet, what would you do? You do the math!

The Internet poses many dilemmas. Parents cannot prevent children from using it. That would only sterilize them from the Internet.

Once they have been "contaminated", parents' efforts will be in vain. Parents can prevent this from happening by putting the Internet-enabled computer in the living room where everyone can use it.

However, this course of action can only reduce the risk.

Parents should try to render their children immune from the bad things on the Internet.

It means the children must be able to distinguish between what is good and what is bad for them. The only way is always to assist children when using the Internet.

Don't be afraid that your children might be smarter than you in this case. Both of you are learners. Your children are experienced learners on the Internet; however, you are a more experienced learner about life.

Combining both of your experiences can be fruitful parent- child quality time.

Oh, by the way, Lisa is a male, who relays other camhoes.

Kelik Tunomo (not his real name) lives in the U.S. where he studies how technology changes lives: kelik_tunomo@yahoo.com