The Importance Of Internet Privacy

Internet and Privacy

1.0 Introduction

Privacy is not a new concept. It existed before the era of the current telecommunications networks and technologies (Tavani, 1999). Privacy is a natural action or reaction of individuals as one of their rights in public (Lin and Loui, 1998).

For example, sealing an envelope or closing the door reminds us of privacy (Stefik,

1999). The evolving and rapid advancement of new technologies such as the telecommunication networks and in particular, the Internet, especially, after BernersLee presented a project in 1991 to permit links to be created to any information anywhere, are known today as the “WorldWideWeb (WWW)” (Rhyno, 2003). The use of the Internet has increased rapidly. The Internet is now considered

The privacy concerns of Internet users have increased and the signs of these concerns started to appear from the middle of the 1990s after the commercial development of the WWW browser in 1994 (Kruck et al., 2002). This essay is going to present the meaning of privacy and the implications of it for Internet users. Also, this essay will demonstrate some of the issues that are presented in the literature, as well as exploring different authors’ perspectives on Internet and Privacy concerns. 2.0 What is Privacy

There are lots of authors who have attempted to define privacy in the literature, and theories covering several privacy issues have presented privacy as non- intrusion, the control of information, and restricted access, along with other issues. However, the concept of privacy is hard to understand and is not easy to define (Tavani, 1999), because this concept is linked with several dimensions such as the personal body, personal behaviour and currently, personal communications and personal information

(Clarke, 1999). These dimensions are governed by certain laws and policies which form the dimensions based in these laws and policy legislations.

3

The literature presents several definitions for the meaning of privacy. For

3.0 Internet and Privacy

After exploring some of the above privacy definitions, this section will present the meaning of the expression, Internet privacy. Tavani (1999) pointed out that some scholars confine the expression, Internet privacy, to the issues that are connected to privacy concerns which are connected with user activities during the use of the

Internet.

Although there are several aspects of privacy, privacy issues associated with the use of the Internet are most likely appointed under communications privacy, involving the user of the Internet’s personal information and activities, and the disclosure of them online (Paine et al., 2006a).

It is worth noting that the activities using the Internet are not only associated with entering personal information by the Internet user online, such as in purchasing online or in applying for a job, or for some other purpose, but also in surfing the Web, for instance, using a search engine like Google or visiting any Web site that sheds any visitor with what are commonly known as cookies, which silently collect information about the visitor (Lin and Loui, 1998; Tavani, 1998). This is considered to be releasing personal information and these personal transactions have caused a rise