Risks to Internet privacy
Those concerned about Internet privacy often cite a number of privacy
risks - events that can compromise privacy - which one may encounter
through Internet use. Unfortunately, given the complexity of Internet
privacy, many people do not understand the issues. Therefore this
section covers not only "real" privacy risks, but also risks perceived
as overemphasized. As an example for the complex issue of Privacy web site
owners could decode your emails or computer Internet History, which is a
breach of the user's privacy. This could lead to sensitive information, such
as the user's financial information, passwords, and credit
card numbers.
Privacy measures are provided on several, if not all, social networking sites.
On Facebook for example, a site especially popular among teens,
privacy settings are available for all registered users. The utilization of
these settings is simple and quick, although their availability is not always
taken advantage of. The settings available on Facebook include
the ability to block certain individuals from seeing your profile, the ability
to choose your "friends," and the ability to limit who has access
to your pictures and videos. Privacy settings are also available on other social
networking sites such as E-harmony and Myspace. While privacy
on the internet is a very real concern, social networking sites are taking
adequate precautionary measures to provide protection for their users. Now
that safety settings have been made easily accessible on many sites, it is
the responsibility of the user to apply them when providing personal information
and pictures on the internet.
Cookies
Cookies have become perhaps the most widely-recognized privacy risk, receiving
a great deal of attention. Although HTML-writers most commonly use cookies
for legitimate, desirable purposes, cases of abuse can and do occur.
An HTTP cookie consists of a piece of information stored on a user's computer
to add statefulness to web-browsing. Systems do not generally make the user explicitly aware of the
storing of a cookie. (Although some users object to that, it does not properly
relate to Internet privacy, although it does have implications for computer
privacy, and specifically for computer forensics).
The original developers of cookies intended that only the website that originally
sent them would retrieve them, therefore giving back only data already possessed
by the website. However, in actual practice programmers can circumvent this
intended restriction.
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