Privacy in Cyberspace Essay -- Internet Essays

Privacy in Cyberspace Computers and the Internet have changed many things in the world today. People surf the web on a daily bases for information and entertainment. The Internet is making things like paying your bills from home a possibility. This was something that you had to leave the house to do, even if it was just dropping a check in the mail. Now you can pay your bills and buy your groceries, with every thing being just a point and a click away. Other things that can be done on the Internet is E-mail and stock trading. The police and the FBI have even used the Internet to capture and convict criminals. All this new technology is coming at us so fast and from so many places. Such as television, magazines and news papers, pushing to buy sell or trade on the Internet. Yet how much do we know about what happens when you buy something or E-mail someone, who sees all this information. Could some Internet criminal get my credit card numbers, or bank account information. Many people in to days world do a great deal of their finical business on the Internet. Yet who is to say that people who the message is being sent are the only ones who will be reading it. You must remember that when you log on and send a message to someone that it could go through many systems before it gets to its final destination. While being sent through the system any one can read what was sent, and it is not illegal if it is readily accessible to the public. As you are looking at other peoples computers they can be looking at your computer. Many browsers keep track of where you have been on the Internet by using cookies. A cookie file is a small piece of information that a web server can store. However cookies are not without their problems. On... ...to your encrypted files then someone else could also. This issue should go one way or the other. It is either you take the risk of letting everyone have a chance to access what you wrote, or nobody has access to it. If nobody has access or control over what is going on then it could become a criminals play ground. Yet if we let people have access to our accounts, we have some degree of safety, at the cost of our privacy. I look at it this way if you don=t want people to see your underwear drying on a close line don=t put them on the line to start with. The same goes for your E-mail if you don=t want other people to read it then don=t send it. It is the same thing with keeping a secret once you tell one person they could tell some one else, that is why they say that three people can keep a secret if two are dead. Source Privacy in Cyberspace privacyright.org