#5 privacy

Privacy is the ability that someone has to control what information that person reveals to others. This has the same general idea for internet privacy, what information that one wants or does not want to be able to share with other internet users. A huge challenge in todays privacy is determining what is public or what is private to other people. People all over the world desire at least some sort of privacy in life, regardless in which aspect of life it may be. My perspective on privacy is the information that people would like to keep closed off from others and not let them know anything about it. There are so many ways around people’s privacy today, especially on the internet. There are many sites today that allow the access of strangers into the lives of other people. Certain sites consist of ones like MySpace and Face book. I think that MySpace is one of the bigger problems with privacy today because it allows anyone on the site to be able to access any user on MySpace’s account. Within these profiles is information about whoever you want to know information about. Although it may not seem like a big deal, sites like these can lead to major problems. This is how stalkers on the internet emerge to innocent people and have their lives affected.

These sorts of cases are a big of enough deal, but there are also other aspects of people’s information that is affected out there on the internet. People all over the internet commit fraud everyday, an in a sense are able to access very private information to others, such as financial and banking info. People can gain information to others through things like cookies and ISP’s. Cookies are huge privacy risks, and are a piece of information stored on a computer to help its web browsing. ISP’s are they way that people are access the internet, more or less an address. If someone else can obtain your ISP, then it could be disastrous. What we have here are a few ways in which are processes for others being able to access others privacy through the internet, which may seem harmless, but really aren’t.

A scenario in which I can relate internet privacy too is something that did not directly happen to me, but to my twin brother who also goes to school here. It really wasn’t that big of a deal but it was something that definitely can be correlated with privacy. I think it was last yea during Christmas break, and my mom and I him were taking care of all the school stuff for the upcoming spring semester. In doing this, we each had to go online to the UB website and fill out our housing application and put the down payment on our dorms for next year. Each down payment was 200$, and we each had to take that from our checking accounts. I did mine with no problem or anything that had interfered with being able to successfully complete it. Nick had some trouble with his, not at the moment he actually completed it, but in the future. He had been able to put the payment down with not trouble, but a couple weeks later he noticed that something wasn’t right. He noticed in his checking account that he was actually missing four hundred dollars from the process of the housing rather then the 200 hundred. It turned out that somehow instead of him having to complete the process of housing, the process had already been completed on its own or something like that. I did not really understand the full details that my mom and him and let me known about it, but for some reason his was already paid for before he had actually paid for it. He was reimbursed with the other 200$, but I think it was something to think about when that kind of transaction happens without. This is the sort of situation where you can’t really help but trust, since it’s through a huge academic institution, but it may be something to question.