I constantly worry about my privacy online. For me, privacy is something that people provide one another out of respect. As individuals we are entitled to our private lives, which are defined by what we choose to do, where we choose to go and the space around us. I mean it is psychologically healthy for people to set boundaries. Privacy on the Internet however is one of the most difficult things to be taken care of. Just type your name into a search engine and voila there appears your name, address and phone number for the world to see. Consider your e-mail inbox for example. If your inbox is continuously filled with spam, it is because at some point in time you unknowingly surrendered your e-mail address to the wrong website. Your telephone number and home address are no different. There are certain small companies such as Merlin who buy and sell your personal information. Merlin is just one of many commercial data brokers that advertises the sale of unlisted phone numbers, which are gathered from various sources such as pizza delivery companies (Sullivan, 2006). Even within our own computers HTTP cookies are used for authenticating, tracking, and maintaining specific information about users, such as site preferences and the contents of their electronic shopping carts. Cookies have been of concern for Internet privacy, since they can be used for tracking browsing behavior (HTTP Cookies, 2008). Many programs and operating systems are also set up to perform data logging of usage. This may include recording times when the computer is in use, or which web sites are visited. If a third party has sufficient access to the computer, legitimately or not, this may be used to lessen that user's privacy. This can be avoided by disabling logging or clearing logs regularly (Internet Privacy, 2008).
According to Privacy International, the United States is an extensive surveillance society (Privacy International, 2006). I think the problem is that most people assume that they have control over who has access to their personal information and that these exchanges are private and secure. Unfortunately, this is far from the truth. Every time you access a website or send email, you leave information about yourself that includes your computer IP address, home address, telephone and credit card number(s), consumer pattern data and much more. If you use the Internet and/or email without taking the proper safety precautions then you have probably given up your right to privacy. Even more so, I think that people are just careless when it comes to keeping their information private. It has even been shown that “people will surrender personal information like Social Security numbers just to get their hands on a measly 50-cents-off coupon” (Sullivan, 2006).
I know that being able to disclose personal information about your self is healthy and can even be therapeutic to some people; however, is it safe to do when the audience is anonymous? Yes, you want the freedom of speech but we know that there is a limitation to how much information should be revealed. By taking photographs and videos of yourself and uploading them to such applications as blogs, Facebook, and YouTube, we are actually enabling others to infringe upon our privacy. People may start to feel a certain emotional attachment to you when reading or viewing your personal artifacts, but can you really trust that stranger? Sure, you can read his/ her personal information in return but there is no guarantee that the information is authentic. For example, we have all heard stories on Myspace where a 40 year-old man pretends to be a 15 year-old girl in order to talk and eventually meet up with an underage girl.
A specific scenario in which my privacy was invaded occurred when my identity was stolen on eBay about four years ago. I had had an eBay account for several years prior to this incident and had never experienced any negative consequences of releasing my checking account information over the Internet. I am very meticulous about keeping my expenses accounted for in my checkbook so I knew if anything were to happen, I would find out about it within a matter of days. I distinctly remember going through my bank statement one day and seeing some unaccounted for eBay charges that were made to some strange websites that I had never heard of before; one of which was a German website. I then quickly contacted eBay’s customer service number who confirmed that these charges were made under my account but were certainly not being sent to my address. The man on the other line was very nice about everything and was quick to refund me my eighty dollars. I then asked if they (eBay) intended on doing anything about this, since I knew it would be easy for them to find out who did this by seeing where the stuff was sent. Unfortunately, he responded by telling me that eBay could not look into his personal information because it was an invasion of his privacy. I was absolutely stunned that the law was going to protect someone that just broke it. I was so scared about my stolen identity that I did not know what else to do then to completely cancel my eBay account. I then went as far as to contact my bank and get a new checking account number for myself. Even though it may seem that I went to some drastic measures I do not regret my decision and ever since that day I have not created a new eBay account. In terms of the social networking sites that I am involved in, I always make sure as to adjust my privacy settings so that people that I approve can only view my account.
References:
“HTTP cookie.” (2008, September). From Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, Retrieved September 23, 2008 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie
“Internet Privacy.” (2008, September). From Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, Retrieved September 23, 2008 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_privacy
Privacy International. (2006, February). “Leading surveillance societies in the EU and the World” Retrieved September 23, 2008 from http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd%5B347%5D=x-347-545269
Sullivan, Bob. (2006, October). “Privacy Lost: Does Anybody Care?” Retrieved September 23, 2008 from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15221095/
6 comments:
Great post! I agree with your post; I think you have an interesting point when you say that it's healthy to practice self-disclosure, but it's important to be mindful of the kinds of information you're giving others. As you said in your blog post, it's not healthy to disclose personal identifying information like social security numbers, for example.
Wow, I can't believe that happened to you just from using ebay. I don't blame you at all for changing your account number, because I would have done the same thing. I really don't understand how privacy laws can protect criminals but not the people they steal from.
You never know if you did stick with your banking account if more problems would've came your way. So I have to agree it's better to be safe than to be sorry.
what are some safety precautions you would recommend when using the internet and e-mail more specifically?? I always new your e-mail address obviously isn't secure because of all the junk mail I get, but I assumed your actual account was unable to be tapped into. Great someone probably has my identity.
Andrea, another great post. Thanks for sharing your personal story. How sad that the law designed to protect us protects those who act against us.
You made a ton of great points in this post. The one I liked the most was the point of you made about social networking sites such as facebook and myspace. A lot of people don't realize but these sites can be very detrimental when trying to hide your identity on the internet.
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