User:Olsen13/Privacy online corbyn olsen

Information Held Online:
A massive amount of personal information is collected by pretty much every website on the internet. Signing up is compulsory for Email accounts, Social Networking Sites, Net Banking, even signing up to access a certain piece of information is often required as well as any other organization that feels the need to occupy your details.

While the World Wide Web can be useful, efficient and fun are all well known. Its potential for abuse by pornographers, phishers, scammers and spammers has also been well advertised in the media since its early days. Even with this information about our privacy being at risk online, more and more people are becoming more comfortable offering information about themselves on the internet.

Social Networking Sites:
In most western civilized countries, information gathered from the internet is only limited by the imagination of the user. Rapidly growing in popularity is Social Gathering Websites like Myspace, Face Book and Bebo are targeted at the world in whole, from Young teenagers wanting to make new friends to adults reconnecting with long lost friends, all being made to provide personal details to sign up and create an account online.

Social Profiling, Blogging and Image uploading posse’s a major threat to the privacy of innocent people. A survey conducted by Centre Networks in the UK show 41% of children aged 8-17 who had a visible profile had their profile set so that it was visible to anyone who has access to the internet.

This here is a massive issue, especially with sexual predators roaming children’s profiles without any difficulty, which contains very sensitive materials that could quiet potentially put the user in harms way. That same survey underlined that ease finding that 25% of registered social networking users had posted sensitive personal data about themselves on their profiles (phone numbers, home addresses, etc.)

Research shows evidence that suggest that people in professional workplaces, along with students within certain educational fields are not aware that their online lives could have any bearing effect on their professionalism. An example of this would be in the case of Medical Students at an enclosed prestigious University who were stood down due to a musical parody video was posted on their Facebook Profiles. Later the Dean of the College was informed of the Prank, which included; dancing in a lab, drinking blood (chocolate) out of a plastic skull and lying in body bags. This is a clear example of lack of privacy online and should indefinitely be in the back in all users minds.

As quoted by the Website “Online Lives, Offline Consequences” “As one educator has observed, "[w]hat looks like plagiarism, slander, copyright infringement, and embarrassing public behavior is for many students just creative and social entertainment"

Social networking sites are a major problem, but can be just the tip of the ice berg with hacking and Internet Scams plaguing our cyberspace.

Another massive contender in the internet privacy battle is “Sexting”. Jessica Logan, 18, committed suicide after her ex-boyfriend circulated a nude picture of Jessica around her Ohio school. She hung herself just weeks after appearing on a Television Show to help and prevent others becoming stuck in the same situation. The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy perused teens and young adults and queried them about Sexting or posting such materials online. The results revealed that 39 per cent of teens in the US had sent or posted sexually suggestive messages, and 48 per cent reported receiving such messages.

The findings from Logan’s case are quite extreme but lawsuits can also be deprived from the above example. Parry Aftab, an Internet security expert, is quoted as saying “‘It depends on the age of the child. If somebody’s under the age of 18, it’s child pornography, and even the girl that posted the pictures can be charged. They could be registered sex offenders at the end of all of this” – Article by Kathy Hastings

Email Privacy:
When sending an email, people tend to think of it as a private, controlled environment, where the exchange of words, documents and other files can be transferred at ease online, this occasionally cannot be the case. According to senior director of information technology at Wharton, "Your mailman (email service provider) can read your postcard - by chance, by design or because he's bored” although most administrators have no specific reason to access emails, but the being in such jeopardy is there nonetheless. Sending confidential corporate letters, sensitive images to girlfriends/boyfriends and private personal details to family are all backed up on the servers of the company, weather it be Hotmail or G-Mail. Even once the items have been deleted, who knows who has the authority to gain admission to deleted personal info? Many people have questioned these rights, and if the user even has any rights to own the very same information they wrote or uploaded onto the net.

Taste for Privacy:
A book, incidentally enough named “A Taste for Privacy” shows that on a scale from one to 10 rates the feel for person security online at a quite inadequate four. Quoted from the Book “People are even willing to post naked self portraits online, and doing all kinds of things they will most likely regret”.

Intentional ignorance towards concern of personal privacy can result in other serious, physical and virtual harassment and assault in the real world. The visibility of user’s whereabouts or contact numbers can lead to random or premeditated attacks.

[Cyber-Bullying]

Amongst younger people generally, is where bullying takes a form in a virtual world, whether it be on Social Networking Websites, MSN, Chat Rooms or even games on the internet can be a potential threat. A study outlined by conducted by Michele Ybarra, revealed that no less than 64 percent of the respondents, who admitted they have been harassed online, said they have never been victims of such activities in person. This finding proves us that the Internet can easily represent a new category of victims, as the experts noted, but it also allows malicious persons to conduct dangerous activities without any limitation.

Phishing:
Where a fake website is designed almost identically to the authentic version, scamming people into providing log-in details to access your real personal Bank Accounts, Online Auctions as well as Social Profiling Web Pages.

Spam:
Spam is a general term used to describe electronic 'junk mail’ to an email address or mobile phone. Often sent in large amounts, they try and persuade the user to sign up, purchase or steal bank account details.

References:
1.   Online Lives, Offline Consequences: Professionalism, Information Ethics and Professional Students - http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2009/01/article.php?id=22 2.   Unwitting Exposure: Does Posting Personal Information Online Mean Giving Up Privacy? - http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1567 3.   Centre Networks URL; http://www.centernetworks.com/social-networking-survey

4.   Cyber-Bullying: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Experts-Teens-Vulnerable-To-Cyber-Bullying-72115.shtml