Privacy threats on the web
Privacy threats on the web
When you are surfing the web you may think you are anonymous, but there are various ways that information about you or your activities can be collected without your knowledge or consent:
HTTP
Browsers
There may already be information about you
published on web
Downloading freeware or shareware
Search engines
Spam
Dangers of internet relay chat
When you access a web page from a website, the website expects you to provide certain information so that it can provide the page you request. The HyperText transfer protocol (HTTP) is the set of rules that websites and browsers follow in order to communicate. One obvious piece of information the website will require is what page you want to look at. The technical term for the location of this page is the Uniform Resource Locator (URL).
There are various aspects of HTTP which may allow your surfing activities to be tracked. Other information which may be sent whenever you request a web page includes your e-mail address and the last web page you looked at. Whether this information is transmitted is dependant on whether your browser supports these options and whether you have got your browser configured with your e-mail address.
The most widely used browsers are the various versions of Netscape Navigator and Communicator and Microsoft Internet Explorer. Other less widely used browsers include Mosaic, which was one of the original browsers and Lynx which is a text based browser. There have been many reports of security bugs in browsers which can allow hackers and websites to access your personal information while you are surfing the web. Netscape and Microsoft often provide fixes for these bugs soon after they become aware of them, these can be downloaded from their websites. It's difficult to assess the risk to your personal information of using any particular browser, but it may be wise to keep up to date with news about security bugs.
There may already be information about you
published on the Web
Governments, schools, businesses and other organisations may have already collected personal information about you. Information collected by governments is sometimes publicly available in the form of Public Registers. The Electoral Roll, and the Telephone Directory are Public Registers. Your school, university or employer may publish your name or other information about you. Much personal information which is publicly available has been collected and combined into databases by web based companies which then sell this information to businesses or individuals. Comprehensive and sometimes inaccurate profiles of individuals can be derived by combining information from many sources.
As there is little or no law anywhere in the world governing this sort of activity there's not much you can do about it, but at least you can be aware of it.
Downloading freeware or shareware
There is a lot of free and cheap software available for download on the Internet. It may be difficult to avoid using freeware and shareware as much of this software underpins the Internet (some popular web server applications are free as are the two most popular browsers, Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Explorer). However, it may be prudent to keep track of information about freeware and shareware and only use the software that is widely used and has a good reputation.
These are web-based software tools that allow you to search for information on the Internet. Some of the most well known ones are Google, Yahoo, Alta Vista, Hotbot, Excite, Infoseek and Web-Crawler. Many of these offer facilities to search for people. If your name appears somewhere on the Internet then these search engines can find it. Your name may be associated with other information about you so it may be possible for anyone using search engines to find out quite a bit about you. Some search engines also allow the searching of news groups for postings associated with an e-mail address.
Spam is junk e-mail. Many people who have purchased something over the Internet or have their e-mail address published on a website or have subscribed to a news service or who have participated in news groups or mailing lists, get spam. This is because these public sources can be harvested for e-mail addresses. Some ISPs and other Internet businesses have sold lists of their customer's e-mail addresses to spammers. This is now considered to be very bad form. Spammers have been known to use programs to randomly generate e-mail addresses.
Spam has become so prevalent that it can compromise and slow down the whole network. There is now a big anti-spam movement and there are various spam filters you can get to filter out and delete spam. There are also movements to get spam regulated by law. Unfortunately, spam persists. This is probably because it is so cheap and easy to send thousands of spam advertisements that the few sales that result from spam makes it a commercial proposition. It's an unfortunate fact that if you participate in discussion groups or subscribe to news services then you will probably get spam. The fact that spam is a use of your e-mail address for a purpose that you don't agree to and that you are actually paying for the delivery of the spam makes it particularly annoying. Some netizens think that the only way to control spam is for governments to regulate it by law.
Chat groups have become very popular. As they operate in real-time they are similar to telephone party lines. Many people who participate in chat groups use nyms or handles, so you don't really know who you are chatting with or even their gender. Some people have established relationships on chat groups which they have continued in real life. However, it is important to note that your personal safety may be at risk, if you meet people from chat rooms, otherwise unknown to you.