Internet Privacy Issues of 2012

The widespread use of the Internet has inevitably led to intense debates about the issue of user privacy. There are individuals who spend all their waking hours on the Internet, divulging information and performing tasks that are easily accessible by millions of strangers from all around the world. With this vast sea of information out in the public domain, it was only a matter of time before malicious parties started attacking and misusing this information, and this has led to a public outcry against the distribution of such information.

There are several privacy issues which are plaguing the Internet today, and most of these stem from the basic fact that most people do not know what kind of information they should and should not post on the Internet. The first piece of advice that any Internet user should remember is to not put any information out there that you do not want someone else to see. You should accept the fact that anything that is on the Internet can be accessed by someone, one way or another, so nothing is totally secure. People who carry out financial transactions online need to post their details and information online, but they should also be aware that anything can happen anytime. So always be prepared for the worst.

Pressing Internet Privacy Issues of 2012

Social Networking
The most drastic change in the last few years has been the rise of social networks like Facebook. People are now convinced that they need to carry out a pseudo-life over the Internet and Facebook is the best medium for them to achieve this. With a blatant desire to get noticed and to show others how super their lives are, people resort to putting up private information on the network, which is bound to be misinterpreted and misused. There have been cases where people have bragged about heading out for the wildest vacation, only to return and find their home broken into, because someone saw this information on Facebook.

But the biggest danger to Internet privacy rights over social networks is not from petty thieves and pornographers, it is from advertisers. The same advertisers that provide revenue to the network. The same advertisers that the network would have no qualms selling your most personal information to, for a few extra bucks. Details about your life, about your likes, about the webpages you visit, about your actual physical location due to location based apps, about the goods you buy and about the people you talk to, are all integrated into the ecosystem of the social network, and why would the network not use this information for their benefit. There will come a time when advertisers will know everything about you so that they can send you a highly personalized advertisement, and who is to say that this is not a violation of one's privacy? The only way to avoid this is to regulate the information that you actually choose to share and express over the Internet.

Hacking
This is something that has been around ever since the Internet first showed itself. Most websites that deal with confidential information provide secured servers to protect users, but there is always a chance that someone will break in and misuse the information. Take the example of the recent hack into the Sony PlayStation Network. More than 100 million people were affected by this, and a majority of these people had posted their credit card details on the network. Ultimately it turned out that the hackers did not misuse this information, but what if they had? The ethical issues leave us perplexed about what is right and wrong, but a line has to be drawn somewhere.

There are several other platforms over which such hackers can operate, and the only person who will suffer is the individual whose information has been hacked into. Unfortunately, there is no way around this, since many people do perform financial transactions over the Internet. The only thing one can really do is pay and pray that one does not experience such a calamity.

The most glaring example comes from Sony, who in April 2011, were attacked. The hackers managed to obtain the personal information of millions of users in the PlayStation network. This includes their birth dates, email addresses and user names and passwords. They were then hacked again in 2012 by 'Anonymous', who managed to pull a Direct Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, clogging up Sony's communication network. It's obvious that if a giant like Sony isn't safe, smaller companies or even individuals aren't safe from attacks either.

Cookies and Malware
An Internet cookie is a great way for websites to recognize visitors who repeatedly view the website, by sending some information to the web browser of the visitor. As a result of this, the website remembers the preferences of the viewer the last time he came around, and this is a great way for effectively sustaining their viewership. But what does this actually mean for a web user? In effect, a cookie is nothing more than a simple piece of information, but when this information falls into the wrong hands it can be seriously misused. Imagine that a malicious party gets his hands on an Internet cookie on your machine which tells him all about the website that you visited, the transactions that you carried out, the details that you entered and the preferences that you set. Even additional details like email addresses and passwords are included here, so the risks are definitely very high.

This issue becomes even more serious because some websites store cookies on one's browser without their permission. This is considered a grave offense, because the information provided in these cookies leads to the activation of malware, spyware, unwanted advertisements and other spam. A cookie itself does not cause any harm, but the information that a cookie carried on the hard drive of a machine can be severely misused by many malicious parties. Malware and Spyware are also huge threats to privacy because these are programs that sneak into the machine of an individual through the Internet, and then relay back information to another location from time to time. This eventually leads to data theft, illegal data distribution and monetization of personal information of Internet users.

Much has happened regarding the privacy laws concerning the Internet over the past few years. Acts such as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT Internet IP Act (PIPA) were bills introduced by the US Government to extend their control over the Internet. As the following rebuttal by Internet communities (both small and large ones, like Wikipedia) shows the power and control that the Internet may potentially have over the world, it is evident that there need to be some hard lines that nobody should cross.

The real problem arises because there are still no detailed laws that govern this realm. This is simply appalling, to say the least, since there are so many millions of people who are constantly online now through advanced smartphones and tablets. The chances of someone's privacy getting violated over the Internet are at their highest right now, and we are eagerly awaiting a day when some stringent laws and tracking systems are enforced so that the people who break these laws are dealt with, in the harshest way possible.