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The journey of a computer hacker often starts in their bedroom – but can end in a jail cell, writes the Sunday People .

Teens can join a criminal underworld without leaving the comfort of their parents’ house, attacking governments or giant corporations while mum and dad sit watching telly.

Hackers tend to be shy, awkward boys who hate authority and take on fearsome anonymous online personas.

The boy accused of the recent Talk Talk hack is just 15-years-old and said to be an avid player of violent computer games who rarely left his bedroom.

On Friday police made a second arrest, a 16-year-old boy from west London, in connection with the investigation into alleged data theft from TalkTalk.

(Image: PhotopressBelfast.co.uk)

In a process which mimics the online radicalisation of young Muslims, angry nerds can quickly be drawn deep into a murky underworld.

They first meet like-minded youngsters in chat rooms through computer games or on web forums packed full of content most parents would find shocking.

The most famous of these cyber-speakeasies is 4Chan, whose members delight in playing cruel tricks.

Girls are rarely welcome on these messageboards, seen only in pornographic pictures which populate almost every page.

Hackers start out with easy targets, perhaps defacing a local government website or stealing data from a small company.

But once they make a name for themselves, they are invited into private forums or websites.

Here, they are able to communicate securely, away from the eyes of law enforcement – and they risk ­being drawn into the murky world of the Dark Web.

In this lawless part of the internet paedophiles, terrorists and drug leaders operate in total anonymity.

Hackers can sell their services, trade in stolen data or even join criminal gangs.

They may pledge allegiance to the dark side, calling themselves a “black hat”, or vow to use their abilities responsibly by taking on the mantle of “white hat”.

(Image: Getty)

The skills of white hats are in great demand, with youngsters easily able to command six-figure salaries if they have the know-how to stop criminals from breaking into a company’s computer system.

Some hackers even go on to become spies, with GCHQ known to be actively involved in recruiting the sort of angry young men who could easily have ended up a threat to society.

Others become “hacktivists” driven by a self-imposed moral responsibility to use their technical knowledge in the service of a cause they believe in.

Privately, top-ranking police officers admit that the skills possessed by young “digital natives” easily outstrip those of the older people who are trying to catch them.

But the threat is getting greater and greater as youngsters grow up with an umbilical link to the sort of technology which baffles their parents and the ability to cover their tracks online, allowing them to operate in total secrecy.

All we can hope is that the ­hackers of today decide to follow the right path rather than the wrong one – because it’s far from clear whether cops, or even spies, will be able to stop them in the future.