Privacy And The Web Essay, Research Paper

As the twenty first century dawns, advances in technology endanger our privacy in ways never before imagined. Each time you use the ATM, visit the doctor, use a credit card, chat on the Internet, or make a phone call, you are leaving electronic fingerprints for all who want to peer into your private life. Nearly every quantifiable aspect of a person?s life finds it way into a data bank somewhere. This information is sometimes studied, other times ignored completely, and other times it?s sold without the consent of that person.

Next time your surfing on the Net or flicking off e-mail messages to your friends, you may want to think twice about what you?re sending or viewing. What you may not know is that upstairs, downstairs, or even in an office across the country, someone may be watching you. They may know the server your logged in on and the Web site you?re at, they may have kept a copy of the e-mail message you just sent to a friend, and they may even be looking at a monitor that shows them exactly what’s on your screen.

It might sound sensational, but the fact is, electronic data logging and monitoring is becoming a lot easier to do, and a lot more common than most people think. What’s more, it’s legal.

People enjoy having private spaces, and want to keep them. Privacy is the interest that individuals have in sustaining a ‘personal space’, free from interference by other people and organisations. Individuals claim that data about themselves should not be automatically available to other individuals and organisations, and that, even where data is possessed by another party, the individual must be able to exercise a substantial degree of control over that data and its use.