Privacy of Personal Information on the Internet
Introduction
What is privacy?
According to Webster’s Dictionary the following is the definition of privacy [6]:
“Secrecy; or one’s private life or personal affairs”.
A Person has information that he does not want to share or does want to share to with everyone. This is a right of an individual and the violation of this right is called invasion of privacy. The concept of privacy converts to the notion of information in the world of internet. Information in this case might constitute to email address, credit card number, social security number etc.
There are two ways in which personal information can be invaded:
1. Misused: Each person gives out information such as email address, street address on the internet. This information is usually not so harmful to the person. Certain marketing companies get hold of this information from the host company to which the person gives his information to and use this information to sell products to the individual.
2. Stolen: This is a more harmful form of invasion. Information such as credit card numbers are stolen from the user’s computer and hacked into while the user is making transactions on the internet. This can lead to serious financial consequences for the person involved.
How can privacy be invaded on the internet?
Here are some examples of ways through which a person can give out personal information on the internet [2]
1. Filling out forms and entering various contests on internet sites.
2. Providing information when registering software usually downloaded from the
internet.
3. Giving out profile information on messaging accounts such as yahoo profiles.
4. Giving personal information to in chat rooms and to strangers which using instant
messaging software.
Invasion of privacy
1. Steps to prevent giving out unnecessary information on the internet?
A. Cookies
Cookies are small files which web-sites maintain on the computer to keep track of the pages to a user visits. They cannot access information on the computer but they keep track of the users surfing habits and can help marketing companies to keep track of user’s profiles and market certain products to them. To turn off cookies the internet browser setting can be changed to prevent cookies [8].
B. Shopping on the internet
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References
1. Surfer Beware: Personal Privacy and the Internet < http://www.epic.org/reports/surfer-beware.html >
2. Privacy Initiative < http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/ >
3. Privacy.Org < http://www.privacy.org/ >
4. Legal Information Institute < http://www.law.cornell.edu/topics/privacy.html >
5. Privacy and the Internet < http://www.ucalgary.ca/~dabrent/380/webproj/leigh.html >
6. Controlling and Securing Personal Privacy and Anonymity in the Information
Society < http://www.niksula.cs.hut.fi/~eklund/Opinnot/netsec.html >
7. The Global Reach of Privacy Invasion <
http://www.thehumanist.org/humanist/articles/waakND02.htm >
8. About..Privacy < http://privacy.getnetwise.org/ >
9. The Federal Trade Commission Act <
http://www.stolaf.edu/people/becker/antitrust/statutes/ftc.html >
Images
a. http://www.cybercrime.gov/rules/cybercitizen4.htm
b. http://www.phaster.com/unpretentious/browsing_test.html
c. http://www.myarkpark.com/adsa/media/images/antivirus.gif
d. http://bhannonlaw.lawoffice.com/practice.htm
..., websites and online marketers do find ways around users’ precautions to gain personal information. There are many people out there who want to use personal information like credit card numbers or addresses to cause harm to others. These cases are the extremely negative ones that people want to and should avoid. The case of companies and third parties tracking browsing history and other information for advertising purposes hover over a finer line between good and bad. For some people, tracking can be considered convenient in terms of shopping for what they are interested in, and others may be uncomfortable with the thought of being tracked without knowing. As stated in the beginning, complete privacy is unlikely, but being informed about the tactics of the Internet can help one protect themselves and others in their care to be as careful and private as possible.
Privacy is becoming rare as our society continues to become more industrialized and move towards a society hyper-focused on technology. Nicholas Carr explains this obsession with technology in his essay “Tracking Is an Assault on Liberty.” He identifies three dangers that are present in today’s internet society that are: personal data can fall into the wrong hands easily, personal information may be used to influence our behavior, and personal privacy is eroding and may lead us as a society to devalue the concept of privacy. These dangers are not only possible but they are seen in our world today.
If a stranger would approach someone on the street, would one casually offer personal information to him? Would one allow him to follow and record one’s activities? Although it may be obvious in the concrete world that one would not allow it, the behavior of the general population on the Internet is strikingly different. While surfing websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google, many people provide personal details to enhance their online profile? These websites retain vast amounts of personal information from their users. Although this practice benefits the user as well, unrestricted profiling can become an alarming catastrophe. Unless the threat to internet users privacy are shown to exceed the benefits, we should not regulate the internet, rather we should educate the public how to be more responsible about their identities.
Third party cookies enables single-sign-on authentication (e.g. Facebook Login), web analytics (e.g. Google Analytics), and third-party advertisements [1].3rd-party cookies enable 'third parties' - websites other than those the user explicitly visits in their browser's address bar or sees on their screen - to record the user's browsing history. The third party can then archive, analyse, and/or trade, sell the information they've recorded [2]. If a first-party website is untrustworthy, users may decline to visit it. But, since users are unaware of the very existence of many third-party websites, they cannot reward responsible sites and penalize irresponsible sites. Thus, Risks associated with third-party tracking are heightened by the lack of market pressure to exercise good security and privacy practices
By receiving this information, the webservers could sell it as part of an advertising database resulting in both electronic and paper junk mail. Legislative action has been enacted to curtail the illegal use of personal information.
We are living in world that is growing in technology. Technology is evolving so rapidly, especially in ways that allow us to store personal information. For example, we can look up a purchase with no receipt at a retail store with a swipe of a credit card. Another example, we could go to the doctor and the nurse can print out a copy of all our health records that are stored in the computer by just typing in our full name. Although this may be a way to make things easier for us, it is also a way for people to take our information without permission and do what they please with it. People can hack into the database of retail stores and steal account numbers and people can just say your name and get your health history if the nurse does not ask for a form of identification. Information privacy is a growing concern for Internet and data users. In a report Protecting Privacy in an Information Age: The Problem of Privacy in Public, researched by Helen Nissenbaum of Princeton University, she states:
Customers' personal data is a treasure for companies looking to discover consumers' online habits and a moneymaker if they sell that information to third parties. There is a giant gap between the type of tracking that companies do on the web and what people know or think is happening. Through a conducted by researchers ”found that information transfer, notice/awareness, and information storage were the top online privacy concerns of Internet users” (Anton) The general public has very little idea that every second they surf on the Internet, their actions are being tracked and used to create a "profile" which is then sold to companies on markets. Online tracking is not the same as it used to be with the traditional cookies, it now involves new tools that gather very sensitive information about the person. These new tools include flash cookies and beacons. Flash cookies can be used to re-install cookies when the user has deleted them, and beacons can track everything a user does on a web page including what the user types and he moves the mouse. However, there are solutions to preserve privacy in the web;” tech...
The web has in recent years brought new concerns about privacy in an age where technology indefinitely stores and records all social media aspects, every online photo posted, every status update, blogs and twitter posts by and about us will be stored forever available for future generations to see. At the heart of the Internet culture is a force that wants to find out everything about you. In 2010 Microsoft published a report that stated that 75 percent of United States recruiters and human resource professionals that they surveyed are not only checking online sources to learn about potential candidates, but they also reported that their companies have made online screening a formal requirement before hiring any candidates. Of the recruiters and human resource professionals surveyed 70 percent say they rejected candidates based on information found on social media site. This has lead so many people’s awareness about online privacy and the need to control public access to private accounts by online privacy settings in order to protect they online and real world reputation. There have been legal suits against many sites and employer’s over the invasion of privacy on the internet. The authenticity of what the recruiters find on these social media sites should be questioned.
Privacy does not have a single definition and it is a concept that is not easily defined. Information privacy is an individual's claim to control the terms under which personal information is acquired, disclosed, and used [9]. In the context of privacy, personal information includes any information relating to or traceable to an individual person [ 1]. Privacy can be defined as a fundamental human right; thus, privacy protection which involves the establishment of rules governing the collection and handling of personal data can be seen as a boundary line as how far society can intrude into a person's affairs.
Everyone online is just as human as they are offline. This means, they are still capable of using the web as a way to harm and trick others just as they would to be kind and help. “The number of identity theft incidents has reached 9.9 million a year”, according to the Federal Trade Commission. People are able to hack into your computer or information in order to use your credit card, take money out of your accounts, gain, use, or even sell all of your information, and much more. People also can pretend to be someone they are not. It is dangerous because you could think it was your friend but really they want to hurt you.
Many browsers keep track of where you have been on the Internet by using cookies. A cookie file is a small piece of information that a web server can store. However cookies are not without their problems. On...
Technological advances create the capability more and more to snoop or invade privacy without detection. Granted, letters have always been opened and conversations overheard, but with technology, the potential for privacy has diminished. When we are sitting in our living room, our cell phone can give away our location; video cameras can be recording our actions through the windows; and remote microphones can be recording our conversation. Before computers and the Internet, you could gather sensitive information on someone, but the ability to divulge massive amounts of information on a large number of people was beyond possible due to the massive manual labor involved. Computers change this limitation, as computers have the potential to process enormous volumes of information.
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.
The methods that criminals use to get identity from people are always changing. There are 3 particular categories that these methods can be divided into.The first category is information given away. This method is referred to as the easiest way to steal someones identity. This occurs when people simply just give away information like their address to strangers or when they are not safe online and their personal information can be accessible to anybody.The second category is known as offline methods.This category includes techniques like: dumpster diving, shoulder surfing, wallet or document theft, bogus phone call, skimming, pretexting and business record theft. The third category is refereed to as online methods. This includes ...
Privacy is the condition where someone personal information can not be documented and be used by others (Parent, 1983). Privacy has been and continues to be a significant issue of concern for both current and prospective electronic commerce customers. The foll...