Reclaiming Information Privacy Online

The tremendous growth in information technology and the use of digital communication medium have led to serious concerns on preserving and reclaiming privacy of users online [1]. Many individuals consider privacy to be a right, but much or all of their online activity can be and is easily tracked by various organizations. Additionally, due to the lack of effective regulations, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are lured to collect and disseminate user specific privacy and profile information for financial gains. In recent times, the strongest effort by the federal government towards addressing this concern was specified in the Freedom of Information Act and Privacy Act [2]. The Act provided guidelines and mechanisms to access, store and transmit individual personal information online. But, in-spite of various recent efforts there are huge lapses in online privacy, with very little accountability to identify and address the problem. The goal of this research and the experimental studies conducted is to demonstrate how information can still be leaked in the current Internet usage and the steps that end-users (clients) can take to mitigate the problem. The research also discusses numerous approaches and tools that can be readily implemented to help bring back privacy to online browsing

Three findings regarding privacy online

The Internet now enables firms to collect detailed and potentially intrusive data about their customers both easily and cheaply. I discuss three empirical results related to customer privacy-protection that is enacted in response to this change

Two Notions of Privacy Online

Users of social networking websites tend to disclose much personal information online yet seem to retain some form of an expectation of privacy. Is this expectation of privacy always unreasonable? How do users of online social networks define their expectations of privacy online? These questions were the impetus behind an empirical study, the findings of which are presented in this Article. The project, simultaneously conducted in Canada, at Ryerson University, and in the United States, at the University of Miami, consisted of a survey regarding personal information protection and expectations of privacy on online social networks (OSNs). Approximately 2,500 young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 were surveyed about the personal information they post online, the measures they take to protect such information, and their concerns, if any, regarding their personal information. Respondents also reacted to several hypothetical scenarios in which their privacy was breached on an OSN by measures both within and beyond their control. The theoretical assumption underlying this research project is that two prevalent and competing notions of privacy online exist: one rooted in control and the other in dignity. Of the two, the idea of privacy as control over one\u27s personal information has, to date, been predominant. Legislation, regulation, corporate policy, and technology are often analyzed and evaluated in terms of the measure of control offered to individuals over their personal information. Leading OSNs, such as Facebook and MySpace, propagate a notion of privacy as user control. However, online social networking poses a fundamental challenge to the theory of privacy as control. A high degree of control cannot preclude the possibility that online socializers would post unflattering, defamatory, or personal information about each other, and that this information would in turn be available to a large, if not unrestricted, online audience. Many online socializers post personal information seemingly without much concern over the loss of control, yet it seems that online socializers react with indignation when their personal information is accessed, used, or disclosed by individuals perceived to be outside their social network. The findings presented here indicate indeed that online socializers have developed a new and arguably legitimate notion of privacy online, that if accepted by OSNs, will offer online socializers both control and protection of their dignity and reputation. We call this notion network privacy. According to network privacy, information is considered by online socializers to be private as long as it is not disclosed outside of the network to which they initially disclosed it, if it originates with them, or as long as it does not affect their established online personae, if it originates with others. OSNs, as businesses profiting from socializing online, are best positioned to offer online socializers, often the young and vulnerable, effective protection in accordance with their notion of network privacy above and beyond regular measures of personal information control, and they should be required to do so

The Internet and Privacy

In this chapter I give a brief explanation of what privacy is, argue that protecting privacy is important because violations of the right to privacy can harm us individually and collectively, and offer some advice as to how to protect our privacy online