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Internet privacy consists of privacy over the media of the Internet: the ability to control what information one reveals about oneself over the Internet, and to control who can access that information. Many people use the term to mean universal Internet privacy: every user of the Internet possessing Internet privacy. Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to control the flow of information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively. ...
Internet privacy forms a subset of computer privacy. Experts in the field of Internet privacy have a consensus that Internet privacy does not really exist. Privacy advocates believe that it should exist. Data privacy refers to the evolving relationship between technology and the legal right to, or public expectation of privacy in the collection and sharing of data. ...
Scope of this article
This article discusses Internet privacy. Readers should understand the general topics of privacy and personally-identifiable information. Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to control the flow of information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively. ...
In information security and privacy, personally identifiable information or personally identifying information (PII) is any piece of information which can potentially be used to uniquely identify, contact, or locate a single person. ...
Levels of privacy People with only a casual interest in Internet privacy need not achieve total anonymity. Regular Internet users with an eye to privacy may succeed in achieving a desirable level of privacy through careful disclosure of personal information and by avoiding spyware. The revelation of IP addresses, non-personally-identifiable profiling, and so on might become acceptable trade-offs for the convenience that such users would otherwise lose in using the workarounds needed to suppress such details rigorously. On the other hand, some people desire much stronger privacy. In that case, they may use Internet anonymity to ensure privacy — use of the Internet without giving any third parties the ability to link the Internet activities to personally-identifiable information of the Internet user. Anonymous redirects here. ...
A large number of toolbars, some added by spyware, overwhelm an Internet Explorer session. ...
In information security and privacy, personally identifiable information or personally identifying information (PII) is any piece of information which can potentially be used to uniquely identify, contact, or locate a single person. ...
Risks to Internet privacy Those concerned about Internet privacy often cite a number of privacy risks — events that can compromise privacy — which one may encounter through Internet use. Unfortunately, given the complexity of Internet privacy, many people do not understand the issues. Therefore this section covers not only "real" privacy risks, but also risks perceived as overemphasized. As an example for the complex issue of Privacy web site owners could decode your emails or computer Internet History, which is a breach of the user's privacy. Lets talk about risk control strategies, anyone with more information and willing to share, please do so. ...
Privacy measures are provided on several, if not all, social networking sites. On Facebook for example, a site especially popular among teens, privacy settings are available for all registered users. The utilization of these settings is simple and quick, although their availability is not always taken advantage of. The settings available on Facebook include the ability to block certain individuals from seeing your profile, the ability to choose your "friends," and the ability to limit who has access to your pictures and videos. Privacy settings are also available on other social networking sites such as E-harmony and Myspace. It is the user's responsibility to apply the settings when providing personal information and pictures on the internet.
Cookies - See main article, HTTP cookie
Cookies have become perhaps the most widely-recognized privacy risk, receiving a great deal of attention. Although HTML-writers most commonly use cookies for legitimate, desirable purposes, cases of abuse can and do occur. This article is about the HTTP state mechanism. ...
This article is about the HTTP state mechanism. ...
An HTTP cookie consists of a piece of information stored on a user's computer to add statefulness to web-browsing. Systems do not generally make the user explicitly aware of the storing of a cookie. (Although some users object to that, it does not properly relate to Internet privacy, although it does have implications for computer privacy, and specifically for computer forensics). In information processing, a state is the complete set of properties (for example, its energy level, etc. ...
WWWs historical logo designed by Robert Cailliau The World Wide Web (commonly shortened to the Web) is a system of interlinked, hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. ...
The simple definition of computer forensics - Chris L.T. Brown, Computer Evidence Collection and Preservation, 2006 Thus, it is more than the technological, systematic inspection of the computer system and its contents for evidence or supportive evidence of a civil wrong or a criminal act. ...
The original developers of cookies intended that only the website that originally sent them would retrieve them, therefore giving back only data already possessed by the website. However, in actual practice programmers can circumvent this intended restriction. Possible consequences include:
- the possible placing of a personally-identifiable tag in a browser to facilitate web profiling (see below), or,
- possible use in some circumstances of cross-site scripting or of other techniques to steal information from a user's cookies.
Some users choose to disable cookies in their web browsers - as of 2000 a Pew survey estimated the proportion of users at 4%[1]. This eliminates the potential privacy risks, but may severely limit or prevent the functionality of many websites. All significant web browsers have this disabling ability built-in, with no external program required. As an alternative, users may frequently delete any stored cookies. Some browsers (such as Mozilla Firefox and Opera) have an option to have the system clear cookies automatically whenever the user closes the browser. A third option involves allowing cookies in general, but preventing their abuse. There are also a host of wrapper applications that will redirect cookies and cache data to some other location. In information security and privacy, personally identifiable information or personally identifying information (PII) is any piece of information which can potentially be used to uniquely identify, contact, or locate a single person. ...
Cross-site scripting (XSS) is a type of computer security vulnerability typically found in web applications which allow code injection by malicious web users into the web pages viewed by other users. ...
Firefox redirects here. ...
Opera is a cross-platform web browser and Internet suite which handles common Internet-related tasks including visiting web sites, sending and receiving e-mail messages, managing contacts, chatting online, viewing Widgets, downloading BitTorrents, and reading Newsfeeds. ...
The process of profiling (also known as "tracking") assembles and analyzes several events, each attributable to a single originating entity, in order to gain information (especially patterns of activity) relating to the originating entity. On the Internet, certain organizations employ profiling of people's web browsing, collecting the URLs of sites visited. The resulting profiles may or may not link with information that personally identifies the people who did the browsing. “URL†redirects here. ...
Some web-oriented marketing-research organizations may use this practice legitimately, for example: in order to construct profiles of 'typical Internet users'. Such profiles, which describe average trends of large groups of Internet users rather than of actual individuals, can then prove useful for market analysis. Although the aggregate data does not constitute a privacy violation, some people believe that the initial profiling does. Market analysis plays a major part in a firms planning activities. ...
Profiling becomes a more contentious privacy issue, on the other hand, when data-matching associates the profile of an individual with personally-identifiable information of the individual.
Governments and organizations may set up honeypot websites - featuring controversial topics - with the purpose of attracting and tracking unwary people. This constitutes a potential danger for individuals. It has been suggested that Honeynet be merged into this article or section. ...
ISPs Consumers obtain Internet access through an Internet Service Provider (ISP). All Internet data to and from the consumer must pass through the consumer's ISP. Given this, any ISP has the capability of observing anything and everything about the consumer's (unencrypted) Internet activities; however, ISPs presumably do not do this (or at least not fully) due to legal, ethical, business, and technical considerations. “ISP†redirects here. ...
ISPs do, however, collect at least some information about the consumers using their services. From a privacy standpoint, the ideal ISP would collect only as much information as it requires in order to provide Internet connectivity (IP address, billing information if applicable, etc). A common belief exists that most ISPs collect additional information, such as aggregate browsing habits or even personally-identifiable URL histories. “URL†redirects here. ...
What information an ISP collects, what it does with that information, and whether it informs its consumers, can pose significant privacy issues. Beyond usages of collected information typical of third parties, ISPs sometimes state that they will make their information available to government authorities upon request. In the US and other countries, such a request need not involve a warrant.
An ISP cannot know the contents of properly-encrypted data passing between its consumers and the Internet. For encrypting web traffic, https has become the most popular and best-supported standard. Note however, that even if users encrypt the data, the ISP still knows the IP addresses of the sender and of the recipient. (However, see the IP addresses section for workarounds.) WWWs historical logo designed by Robert Cailliau The World Wide Web (commonly shortened to the Web) is a system of interlinked, hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. ...
https is a URI scheme used to indicate a secure HTTP connection. ...
General concerns regarding internet user privacy have become a concern enough for a UN agency report to on the dangers of identity fraud[2].
Data logging Many programs and operating systems are set up to perform data logging of usage. This may include recording times when the computer is in use, or which web sites are visited. If a third party has sufficient access to the computer, legitimately or not, this may be used to lessen the user's privacy. This could be avoided by disabling logging, or clearing logs regularly. Data logging is the practice of recording sequential data, often chronologically. ...
Other potential Internet privacy risks A large number of toolbars, some added by spyware, overwhelm an Internet Explorer session. ...
A Web bug is an object that is embedded in a web page or e-mail and is usually invisible to the user but allows checking that a user has viewed the page or e-mail. ...
Social engineering is the practice of obtaining confidential information by manipulation of legitimate users. ...
An example of a phishing email, disguised as an official email from a (fictional) bank. ...
In computer networks, a proxy server is a server (a computer system or an application program) which services the requests of its clients by forwarding requests to other servers. ...
Anonymous Internet usage For anonymous browsing of websites, see anonymizer. For anonymous email, see anonymous remailer. This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion. ...
An anonymous remailer is a server computer which receives messages with embedded instructions on where to send them next, and which forwards them without revealing where they originally came from. ...
- Further information: anonymity
Anonymous redirects here. ...
Specific cases Image File history File links Wikitext. ...
Jason Fortuny and Craigslist In early September 2006, Jason Fortuny, a Seattle-area graphic designer and network administrator, posed as a woman and posted an ad to Craigslist Seattle seeking a casual sexual encounter with area men. On September 4, he posted to the internet all 178 of the responses, complete with photographs and personal contact details, describing this as the Cragslist Experiment and encouraging others to further identify the respondents. The posting was later mirrored on the satire website Encyclopædia Dramatica.[3] Craigslist is a centralized network of online communities, featuring free classified advertisements (with jobs, internships, housing, personals, for sale/barter/wanted, services, community, gigs, resume, and pets categories) and forums on various topics. ...
is the 247th day of the year (248th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
A mirror in computing is a direct copy of a data set. ...
Although some online exposures of personal information have been seen as justified as exposing malfeasance, many commentators on the Fortuny case saw no such justification here. "The men who replied to Fortuny's posting did not appear to be doing anything illegal, so the outing has no social value other than to prove that someone could ruin lives online", said law professor Jonathan Zittrain[4] , while Wired writer Ryan Singel described Fortuny as "sociopathic".[5] Jonathan Zittrain Jonathan Zittrain (born 1969) holds the Chair in Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford University and is a principal of the Oxford Internet Institute. ...
Wired is a full-color monthly magazine and on-line periodical published in San Francisco, California since March 1993. ...
Ryan Singel is a San Francisco-based blogger and journalist covering civil liberty and privacy issues. ...
The Electronic Frontier Foundation indicated that it thought Fortuny might be liable under Washington State Law, and that this would depend on whether the information he disclosed was of legitimate public concern. Kurt Opsahl, the EFF's staff attorney, said "As far as I know, they (the respondents) are not public figures, so it would be challenging to show that this was something of public concern."[6] EFF Logo The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit advocacy and legal organization based in the United States with the stated purpose of being dedicated to preserving free speech rights such as those protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution in the context of...
Second Life database compromise Also in September 2006, online game Second Life experienced a security breach that resulted in the exposure of its customer database, including the unencrypted names and addresses and the encrypted passwords and billing information of 650,000 users. Linden Lab, the company behind the game, notified the users of the breach and required all users (or 'residents') of the game to reset their passwords before logging in. [7] This article is about a virtual world. ...
Yahoo! and MSN search data Data from major Internet companies, including Yahoo! and MSN (Microsoft) have already been subpoenaed by the United States[8] and China[9]. AOL even provided a chunk of its own search data online[10], allowing reporters to track the online behaviour of private individuals[11]. Yahoo! - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ...
For other uses, see MSN (disambiguation). ...
Microsoft Corporation, (NASDAQ: MSFT, HKSE: 4338) is a multinational computer technology corporation with global annual revenue of US$44. ...
For other uses, see AOL (disambiguation). ...
US v. Zeigler Ziegler: Online Porn Use on a Workplace Computer Is it Private and Protected by the Fourth Amendment?
The Internet, Computers and Privacy In Relation to The Fourth Amendment In the last decade, people have utilized computers and the internet for numerous useful and legal purposes. Unfortunately, criminals have also used the technology for illegal purposes. Accordingly, courts have had to determine whether law enforcement officials can access evidence of illegal activity stored on digital technology without encroaching on a person's Fourth Amendment rights.
Many cases discuss whether a private employee (i.e., not a government employee) who stores incriminating evidence in workplace computers is protected by the Fourth Amendment's reasonable expectation of privacy standard in a criminal proceeding. However, these cases do not appear to produce a uniform and consistent standard of law.
Most case law holds that employees do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy when it comes to their work related electronic communications. See, e.g. US v. Simons, 206 F.3d 392, 398 (4th Cir., Feb. 28, 2000).
However, one federal court held that employees can assert that the attorney-client privilege with respect to certain communications on company laptops. See Curto v. Medical World Comm., No. 03CV6327, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 29387 (E.D.N.Y. May 15, 2006).
Another recent federal case discussed this topic. On January 30, 2007, the Ninth Circuit court in US v. Ziegler, reversed its earlier August 2006 decision upon a petition for rehearing. In contrast to the earlier decision, the Court acknowledged that an employee has a right to privacy in his workplace computer. However, the Court also found that an employer can consent to any illegal searches and seizures. See US v. Ziegler, ___F.3d 1077 (9th Cir. Jan. 30, 2007, No. 05-30177). [1] Cf. US v. Ziegler, 456 F.3d 1138 (9th Cir. 2006).
In Ziegler, an employee had accessed child pornography websites from his workplace. His employer noticed his activities, made copies of the hard drive, and gave the FBI Party Van the employee's computer. At his criminal trial, Ziegler filed a motion to suppress the evidence because he argued that the government violated his Fourth Amendment rights.
The Ninth Circuit allowed the lower court to admit the CP evidence. After reviewing relevant Supreme Court opinions on a reasonable expectation of privacy, the Court acknowledged that Ziegler had a reasonable expectation of privacy at his office and on his computer. That Court also found that his employer could consent to a government search of the computer, and that did not violate Ziegler's Fourth Amendment rights.
State v. Reid State v. Reid: Online Sabotage of an Employer's Computer in New Jersey Is an employees internet use protected by her rights of privacy
A New Jersey appellate court has also issued an opinion on the privacy rights of computer users. That court held that computer users can expect that the personal information they give their internet service providers are considered private. State v. Reid 2007 N.J. Super. LEXIS 11 (January 22, 2007). [2].
In that case, prosecutors asserted that Shirley Reid broke into her employer’s computer system and changed its shipping address and password for suppliers. The police discovered her identity after getting a subpoena to the internet provider, Comcast Internet Service.
The lower court suppressed information from the internet service provider that linked Reid with the crime. The New Jersey appellate court agreed with this decision. As a result, New Jersey offers greater privacy rights to computer users than most federal courts. Although this case does not directly discuss the Fourth amendment, it illustrates that some states are providing more privacy protection to computer users than the federal courts. It also illustrates that caselaw on privacy in workplace computers is still evolving
See also Anonymous web browsing is browsing the World Wide Web while hiding the users IP address and any other personally identifiable information from the websites that one is visiting. ...
Internet censorship is control or suppression of the publishing or accessing of information on the Internet. ...
Crimeware is a class of computer program designed specifically to automate financial crime. ...
It has been suggested that Friend-to-friend with third party storage be merged into this article or section. ...
Tor, an anonymous Internet communication system, is a second generation Onion Routing network that allows people to communicate anonymously. ...
Java Anon Proxy, also known as Java Anonymous Proxy or JAP, is a proxy system designed to allow browsing the Web anonymously. ...
For other uses, see Freenet (disambiguation) Freenet is a decentralized censorship-resistant peer-to-peer distributed data store aiming to provide electronic freedom of speech through strong anonymity. ...
GNUnet is a framework for decentralized, peer-to-peer networking. ...
Proxomitron, the Universal Web filter was created by Scott R. Lemmon and is a configurable personal web proxy tool. ...
FLAIM (Framework for Log Anonymization and Information Management) is a modular tool designed to allow computer and network log sharing through application of complex data sanitization policies. ...
Peter Steiners Cartoon On the Internet, nobody knows youre a dog is an adage which began as the caption of a famous cartoon published by The New Yorker on 5 July 1993, and authored by Peter Steiner. ...
References Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
is the 260th day of the year (261st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
Todays San Francisco Chronicle was founded in 1865 as The Daily Dramatic Chronicle by teenage brothers Charles de Young and Michael H. de Young. ...
Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ...
is the 168th day of the year (169th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
The Associated Press, or AP, is an American news agency, the worlds largest such organization. ...
Ryan Singel is a San Francisco-based blogger and journalist covering civil liberty and privacy issues. ...
Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
is the 251st day of the year (252nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
is the 255th day of the year (256th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
The Associated Press, or AP, is an American news agency, the worlds largest such organization. ...
Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
is the 254th day of the year (255th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
is the 257th day of the year (258th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
External links
Resources and information The Open Directory Project (ODP), also known as dmoz (from , its original domain name), is a multilingual open content directory of World Wide Web links owned by Netscape that is constructed and maintained by a community of volunteer editors. ...
The Open Directory Project (ODP), also known as dmoz (from , its original domain name), is a multilingual open content directory of World Wide Web links owned by Netscape that is constructed and maintained by a community of volunteer editors. ...
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