"Who would watch you without your permission? It might be a spouse, a girlfriend, a marketing company, a boss, a cop or a criminal. Whoever it is, they will see you in a way you never intended to be seen - the 21st century equivalent of being caught naked."(Bob Sullivan, 2006) The Websters New World Dictionary describes the word privacy as being private; seclusion, secrecy and one's private life. It also describes the word private as not being open to or controlled by the public.
"When you are surfing the web you may think you are anonymous, but there are various ways that information about you or your activities can be collected without your knowledge or consent."(Privacy Threats on the Web, n.d.) Some ways that your information can be received is through cookies, downloading freeware or shareware, search engines, email and spam etc. The information that caught my attention was the cookies. I've seen them pop up before on my computer and I didn't know what they were until I started this assignment.
A cookie is a piece of information that an Internet website sends to your browser when you access information at that site(Privacy Threat on the Web, n.d.). The way cookies work is that it allows website operators to assign a unique permanent identifier to a computer which can be used to associate the requests made by the website from that computer cookies indicate to a website that you have been there before. Providing personal information about yourself or buying something online may be recorded by the cookies on that website and can be used to build up a profile about you and your interest. Cookies give web developers the ability to save information from forms onto the client machine. The easiest way to secure yourself against the supposed dangers of cookies is to get one of the latest browser versions and turn off cookies(Jennifer Kyrnin, n.d.).
When I first moved onto campus here at U.B., I set up my computer. I set up all my programs and got everything situated the way that I wanted it. The only thing that was left for me to do was to get on the Internet and start surfing. When I went to turn on the Internet though, it wouldn't work. It wouldn't work because of the schools secure network. It would not allow for me to have cookies on my computer. Until today, I did not no why but I have finally found out. One incident where I was skeptical about my privacy is when I was buying a pair of sneakers online. I had to give my credit card information and my home address. I felt so uncomfortable putting all of my information out there like that. I made up in my mind that I wasn't going to put anymore of my information on the Internet ever again when one day I received a random phone call from America Online stating that I owed them $140.67 on an account that I never opened or knew anything about.
Some people might consider me to be scary or a cautious individual when it comes to information over the Internet, but hackers are hackers. And no matter how secure and safe people think that these networks are, there is always the possibility that the secure network can be breached and I don't want to be one of the individuals who suffer or get effected by it when it happens.
1.) Kyrnin, J. (n.d.). What are HTTP Cookies? Retrieved February 15, 2006, from webdesign.about.com/cs/cookies/a/aa082498a.htm
2.) Sullivan, B. (2006). Privacy Lost: Does Anybody Care? Retrieved February 15, 2006, from msnbc.msn.com/id/15221095
3.) n.a., n.d.. Protecting your privacy on the Internet: Privacy Threats on the Web. Retrieved February 15, 2006 from www.privacy.gov.au/internet/internet_privacy/
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