Internet Challanges To Privacy

Internet technology has posed new challenges for the protection of individual privacy. Information sent over this vast network of networks may pass through many different computer systems before it reaches its final destination. Each of these systems is capable of monitoring, capturing, and storing communications that pass through it. Web sites track searches that have been conducted, the Web sites and Web pages visited, the online content a person has accessed, and what items that person has inspected or purchased over the Web.

Ø  Cookies.

Cookies are small text files deposited on a computer hard drive when a user visits Web sites. Cookies identify the visitor’s Web browser software and track visits to the Web site. When the visitor returns to a site that has stored a cookie, the Web site software will search the visitor’s computer, find the cookie, and know what that person has done in the past.

Ø  Web beacons ( Web bugs )

Web beacons are tiny software programs that keep a record of users’ online click stream and report this data back to whoever owns the tracking file invisibly embedded in e-mail messages and Web pages that are designed to monitor the behavior of the user visiting a Web site or sending e-mail.

Ø  Spyware.

Spyware can secretly install itself on an Internet user’s computer by piggybacking on larger applications. Once installed, the spyware calls out to Web sites to send banner ads and other unsolicited material to the user, and it can report the user’s movements on the Internet to other computers.

Ø  Google services and behavioral targeting.

About 75 percent of global Internet users use Google Search and other Google services, making Google the world’s largest collector of online user data. Whatever Google does with its data has an enormous impact on online privacy. Most experts believe that Google possesses the largest collection of personal information in the world. 

Behavioral targeting is a method used by online publishers and advertisers to increase the effectiveness of their campaigns. Google has been using behavioral targeting to help it display more relevant ads based on users’ search activities and to target individuals as they move from one site to another in order to show them display or banner ads. Google allows tracking software on its search pages, and using Double Click, it is able to track users across the Internet.

Resource: http://www.pearsonglobaleditions.com/Sitemap/mymislab/

Management Information Systems 13e Global edition 
Kenneth Laudon and Jane Laudon