Privacy on the Internet

Privacy on the Internet

In this new era of the Internet, most people use the Internet to acquire information of one kind or other. But what these people are not aware of is that the Internet is collecting information about them. Every time we get onto the Internet there might be a compromise of privacy of our personal information. The information flows both ways. With every clock of the mouse on a hyperlink, or an addition to the mailing list, someone out there might be gathering information about us. This raises the seriousness of privacy of our information on the Internet.

In recent times we might consider that the right for privacy in one of our major achievements in our society. Unfortunately the same does not apply for the Internet. The Internet once considered a place for free information exchange and sharing, has the potential has becoming the biggest threat to its users. The commercialization of the Internet is one of the major reasons why the chances of a compromise of our privacy have increased. Customer profiling, address trading or simple lack of care with sensitive customer information are just some of the threats that this commercialization has bought to our ‘free’ Internet. Another reason being that with the increase of threats there is a regular change in technology to counter these threats. These changes make it harder for the already overstrained users to cope with the ever changing technology.

Thanks to the HTTP, a web server running some simple software programs can acquire our IP address and then gather information about us from our own computer. This information can be anywhere from what kind of software the computer is running to gaining access to all our email contacts. Sometimes less desirabl...

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...f how we, the general population, change so that the appropriate changes made in the right direction can be effective.

6. References

1. Unknown. Privacy in Cyberspace: Rules of the Road for the Information Superhighway (Aug 2003). Privacy Rights Clearing House. 29th March 2004. http://www.privacyrights.org/netprivacy.htm

2. Unknown. Protecting your Privacy on the Internet (2003). Office of the Federal Privacy Commissioner. 29th March 2004. http://www.privacy.gov.au/internet/internet_privacy/

3. Roger Clarke. Information Privacy On the Internet Cyberspace Invades Personal Space (May 1998). Xamax Consultancy Pvt. Ltd. 29th March 2004. http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/DV/IPrivacy.html

4. Unknown. Ethics. Santa Clara University Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. 29th March 2004. http://cseserv.engr.scu.edu/NQuinn/COEN288/EngrHandbook_Ethics.pdf