Internet Privacy Essay

Slowly technology has been disintegrating many aspects of our society, the internet especially. Although the internet has its positive effects such as its wealth of resources it has led to the loss of privacy. For example social networking sites give their users easy access to share information about themselves however, due to the explosion of technology it has made hacking easier to online predators. The government has attempted to help people regain their privacy online by passing the Consumer Internet Privacy Protection Act of 1997, although this law has been difficult to enforce due to the fast advances in technology and the web. In the novel 1984 by George Orwell, a society described to be constantly watched “Big Brother is watching you” (Orwell 4) , where there is no such thing as privacy or freedom of speech and the government is in control of everything. Orwell in this novel foresees the advancements of technology to be harmful to our future society, if we continue to let our privacy be taken away from us it will make us one step closer to living in a society where the government/large corporations control all.
The internet, provided by many devices nowadays “provides everybody with identical technical capacities… publishing his or her personal views on a worldwide scale - and all of this at a minimum cost and effort, without any spatial restrictions” (Geser 9). “Until they became conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious” (Orwell), the internet is easily accessed by many people worldwide and can be easily hacked to find out important private information about anyone. Social networks especially, whose privacy systems have failed to protect their users from their ac...

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...e tools that enable Internet advertisers to track consumers, using "cookies" and location data to pinpoint targets for government hacking and to bolster surveillance” (Perlroth). Due to the internet being an easy way to access information companies have developed techniques to track consumers and target advertising to their certain interest.These technique though used by companies are now being used by the government for tracking. One of the techniques used to track involve cookies which are a small text file placed by a web server. However, their use has attracted criticism from some privacy experts that claim that cookies serve as a passage for online predators to monitor a person's internet activity. Due to this claim if you have had problems with viruses or have had your account hacked you are recommended to not just erase your history but cookies as well.