I define privacy as the freedom of individuals to relay or keep their personal information when they act according to different situations that they are faced with. I worry about my privacy all the time. I even get nervous when I go to purchase an item online; but I have to face the fact that if a person is trying to infringe on my privacy they are going to do it. It’s unnerving to hear things like Wegman’s selling your purchasing information to vendors and you almost have to assume that the vendor has your contact information as well. You can go on Google Earth type in an address and find your house or someone else’s house. Not to mention people who have phones that takes pictures. At this point in time is there any privacy left?
Some of the biggest challenges of personal privacy posed by the internet are that no one really cares or thinks that their privacy is being invaded. In an article by Bob Sullivan , he states “Someday a stranger will read your e-mail, rummage through your instant messages without your permission or scan the Web sites you’ve visited — maybe even find out that you read this story…Perhaps someone will casually glance through your credit card purchases or cell phone bills, or a political consultant might select you for special attention based on personal data purchased from a vendor. In fact, it’s likely some of these things have already happened to you” (Sullivan, 2006). Who is going to think that purchasing an item from Target.com would be detrimental to your privacy? No on thinks that a hacker will break the system and steal their credit card numbers and social security numbers; many think the likelihood is very slim. In an article by Annalee Newitz she said, “The company claimed it was trying to help researchers by providing "anonymized" search information, but experts and the public were shocked at how easy it was to figure out who had been searching on what. Apparently, AOL's anonymizing process didn't include removing names, addresses and Social Security numbers. Although the company has since apologized and taken the data down, there are at least half-a-dozen mirrors still out there for all to browse” (Newitz, 2006). Another challenge to internet privacy is cookies. Cookies are created on your computer so when you go on the internet, your computer can connect to the website faster. However, there are cookies that are used to “track” where you go and privacy can be violated this way. According to Wikipedia the original creators of cookies designed them to be a fast connection to a website but now a personally-identifiable tag can be placed on them for web profiling and cross scripting can occur to steal users cookies (Wikipedia, 2008).
After reading these articles, it’s hard to think that there is any privacy left out there. A scenario that woke me up thinking my privacy was in trouble was that recently I was going to purchase some picture frames online for my mother because I already had a target account. The problem was that I couldn’t remember my password. So I clicked “forgot password?” and I had to retype my credit card information in and my address and so on. They had kept all of that information stored into their database! I was shocked because I had never really thought about what happened to my information after I am through with purchasing items. It sits there for people to view. My mom ended up setting up her own account because I concluded that if someone is going to steal your information they would most likely steal from a person who has used multiple credit cards for purchasing online under the same name and they may be less likely to find out right away if someone had stolen their information. I don’t think the internet is half as safe as they say it is, and we definitely don’t have to privacy that we used to anymore.
Newitz, Annalee. “Privacy Debacle Hall of Fame.” Wired. 21 Oct. 2006. 26 Sep. 2008.
<http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2006/08/71622>.
Internet Privacy. 2008. Retrieved September 26, 2008 from STS Wiki:
https://ublearns.buffalo.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_2_1&url=%
2fwebapps%2fblackboard%2fexecute%2flauncher%3ftype%3dCourse%26id%
3d_61661_1%26url%3d
Sullivan, Bob. “Privacy Lost: Does Anybody Care?” MSNBC.com. 17 Oct. 2006. 26 Sep. 2008.
<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15221095/>.
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2 comments:
I checked out my house on GoogleEarth and you could see my mother-in-law sitting in the front window, clear as day.
i also checked out google earth. i feel like my mom when i say this but my first reaction was "well it is just crazy what the internet can do these days now isn't it!" (as i hear her voice in my head, it kind of resembles the mom from Bobby's World the cartoon if you ever watched it growing up) and for our generation to be surprised by anything is a pretty big deal.
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