Most of the internet and its World Wide Web, E-mail, chat, and newsgroup are still a wide open, unsecured electronic frontier with no tough rules on what information is personal and private.
Information about internet users is captured legitimately and automatically each time you visit a website or newsgroup and recorded as a “cookie file” on your hard disk.
Then the website owners, or online auditing services, may sell the information from cookie files and other records of your internet use to third parties.
To make matter worse, much of the net and web are easy targets for the interception or theft by hackers of private information furnished to websites by internet users.
Of course, users can protect their privacy in several ways. For example, sensitive E-mail can be protected by encryption, if both E-mail parties use compatible encryption software built into their E-mail programs.
Newsgroup posting can be made privately by sending them through anonymous remailers that protect user identity when added comments to a discussion.
Internet service provider can be asked not to sell name and personal information of the user to mailing list providers and other marketers.
Finally, user can decline to reveal personal data and interests on online service and website user profiles to limit user exposure to electronic snooping.
Privacy on the Internet
