Q1: Internet relationship vs. Interpersonal relationship
An interpersonal relationship is a strong, deep, or close association or acquaintance between two or more people that may range in duration from brief to enduring. This association may be based on inference, love,solidarity, regular business interactions, or some other type of social commitment. Interpersonal relationships are formed in the context of social, cultural and other influences. The context can vary from family or kinship relations, friendship, marriage, relations with associates, work, clubs, neighborhoods, and places of worship. They may be regulated by law, custom, or mutual agreement, and are the basis of social groups and society as a whole.
An internet relationship is a relationship between people who have met online, and in many cases know each other only via the Internet. Online relationships are similar in many ways to pen pal relationships. This relationship can be romantic, platonic, or even based on business affairs. An internet relationship (or online relationship) is generally sustained for a certain amount of time before being titled a relationship, just as in-person relationships. The major difference here is that an internet relationship is sustained via computer or online service, and the individuals in the relationship may or may not ever meet each other in person. Otherwise, the term is quite broad and can include relationships based upon text, video, audio, or even virtual character. This relationship can be between people in different states, different countries, different sides of the world, or even people who reside in the same area but do not communicate in person.
Q2~6 Discuss privacy
-What
Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves, or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. The boundaries and content of what is considered private differ among cultures and individuals, but share common themes. When something is private to a person, it usually means that something is inherently special or sensitive to them. The domain of privacy partially overlaps security(confidentiality), which can include the concepts of appropriate use, as well as protection of information. Privacy may also take the form of bodily integrity.
People with only a casual concern for Internet privacy need not achieve total anonymity. Internet users may protect their privacy through controlled disclosure of personal information. The revelation of IP addresses, non-personally-identifiable profiling, and similar information might become acceptable trade-offs for the convenience that users could otherwise lose using the workarounds needed to suppress such details rigorously. On the other hand, some people desire much stronger privacy. In that case, they may try to achieve 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. In order to keep their information private, people need to be careful with what they submit to and look at online. When filling out forms and buying merchandise, that becomes tracked and because the information was not private, companies are now sending Internet users spam and advertising on similar products.
There are also several governmental organizations that protect individual's privacy and anonymity on the Internet, to a point. In an article presented by the FTC, in October 2011, a number of pointers were brought to attention that helps an individual internet user avoid possible identity theft and other cyber-attacks. Preventing or limiting the usage of Social Security numbers online, being wary and respectful of emails including spam messages, being mindful of personal financial details, creating and managing strong passwords, and intelligent web-browsing behaviours are recommended, among others.
Posting things on the Internet can be harmful or in danger of malicious attack. Some information posted on the Internet is permanent, depending on the terms of service, and privacy policies of particular services offered online. This can include comments written on blogs, pictures, and Internet sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. It is absorbed into cyberspace and once it is posted, anyone can potentially find it and access it. Some employers may research a potential employee by searching online for the details of their online behaviours, possibly affecting the outcome of the success of the candidate.
-risks to internet privacy
Companies are hired to watch what internet sites people visit, and then use the information, for instance by sending advertising based on one's browsing history. There are many ways in which people can divulge their personal information, for instance by use of "social media" and by sending bank and credit card information to various websites. Moreover, directly observed behaviour, such as browsing logs, search queries, or contents of the Facebook profile can be automatically processed to infer potentially more intrusive details about an individual, such as sexual orientation, political and religious views, race, substance use, intelligence, and personality.
Those concerned about Internet privacy often cite a number of privacy risks — events that can compromise privacy — which may be encountered through Internet use. These range from the gathering of statistics on users to more malicious acts such as the spreading of spyware and the exploitation of various forms of bugs.
Several social networking sites try to protect the personal information of their subscribers. On Facebook, for example, privacy settings are available to all registered users: they can block certain individuals from seeing their profile, they can choose their "friends", and they can limit who has access to one's pictures and videos. Privacy settings are also available on other social networking sites such as Google Plus and Twitter. The user can apply such settings when providing personal information on the internet.
In late 2007 Facebook launched the Beacon program where user rental records were released on the public for friends to see. Many people were enraged by this breach in privacy, and the Lane v. Facebook, Inc. case ensued.
Children and adolescents often use the Internet (including social media) in ways which risk their privacy: a cause for growing concern among parents. Young people also may not realise that all their information and browsing can and may be tracked while visiting a particular site, and that it is up to them to protect their own privacy. They must be informed about all these risks. For example, on Twitter, threats include shortened links that lead one to potentially harmful places. In their e-mail inbox, threats include email scams and attachments that get them to install malware and disclose personal information. On Torrent sites, threats include malware hiding in video, music, and software downloads. Even when using a smartphone, threats include geolocation, meaning that one's phone can detect where they are and post it online for all to see. Users can protect themselves by updating virus protection, using security settings, downloading patches, installing a firewall, screening e-mail, shutting down spyware, controlling cookies, using encryption, fending off browser hijackers, and blocking pop-ups.
However most people have little idea how to go about doing many of these things. How can the average user with no training be expected to know how to run their own network security (especially as things are getting more complicated all the time)? Many businesses hire professionals to take care of these issues, but most individuals can only do their best to learn about all this.
In 1998, the Federal Trade Commission in the USA considered the lack of privacy for children on the Internet, and created the Children Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). COPPA limits the options which gather information from children and created warning labels if potential harmful information or content was presented. In 2000, Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) was developed to implement safe Internet policies such as rules, and filter software. These laws, awareness campaigns, parental and adult supervision strategies and Internet filters can all help to make the Internet safer for children around the world.
-concern:real life implications
While dealing with the issue of internet privacy, one must first be concerned with not only the technological implications such as damaged property, corrupted files, and the like, but also with the potential for implications on their real lives. One such implication, which is rather commonly viewed as being one of the most daunting fears risks of the Internet, is the potential for identity theft. Although it is a typical belief that larger companies and enterprises are the usual focus of identity thefts, rather than individuals, recent reports seem to show a trend opposing this belief. Specifically, it was found in a 2007 “Internet Security Threat Report” that roughly ninety-three percent of “gateway” attacks were targeted at unprepared home users. It should be noted that the term “gateway” attack was used to refer to attack which aimed not at stealing data immediately, but rather at gaining access for future attacks.
But how, one might ask, is this still thriving given the increasing emphasis on internet security? The simple, but unfortunate solution, according to Symantec’s “Internet Security Threat Report”, is that of the expanding “underground economy”. With more than fifty percent of the supporting servers located in the United States, this “underground economy” has become a haven for internet thieves, who use the system in order to sell stolen information. These pieces of information can range from generic things such as a user account or email to something as personal as a bank account number and PIN (personal identification numbers).
While the processes these internet thieves use are abundant and unique, one popular trap unsuspecting people fall into is that of online purchasing. This is not to allude to the idea that every purchase one makes online will leave them susceptible to identity theft, but rather that it increases the chances. In fact, in a 2001 article titled “Consumer Watch”, the popular online site PC World went as far as calling secure e-shopping a myth. Though unlike the “gateway” attacks mentioned above, these incidents of information being stolen through online purchases generally are more prevalent in medium to large sized e-commerce sites, rather than smaller individualized sites. This is assumed to be a result of the larger consumer population and purchases, which allow for more potential leeway with information.
Ultimately, however, the potential for a violation of one's privacy is typically out of their hands after purchasing from an online “e-tailer” or store. One of the most common forms in which hackers receive private information from online “e-tailers” actually comes from an attack placed upon the site’s servers responsible for maintaining information about previous transactions. For as experts explain, these “e-tailers” are not doing nearly enough to maintain or improve their security measures. Even those sites that clearly present a privacy or security policy can be subject to hackers’ havoc as most policies only rely upon encryption technology which only apply to the actual transfer of a customer’s data. However, with this being said, most “e-tailers” have been making improvements, going as far as covering some of the credit card fees if the information’s abuse can be tracked back to the site’s servers.
As one of the largest growing concerns American adults have of current internet privacy policies, identity and credit theft remain a constant figure in the debate surrounding privacy online. A 1997 study by the Boston Consulting Group showed that participants of the study were most concerned about their privacy on the Internet compared to any other media. However, it is important to recall that these issues are not the only prevalent concerns our society has. Though some may call it a modern-day version of McCarthyism, another prevalent issue also remains members of our own society sending disconcerting emails to one another. It is for this reason in 2001 that for one of the first times ever the public demonstrated an approval of government intervention in their private lives.
With the overall public anxiety regarding the constantly expanding trend of online crimes, in 2001 roughly fifty-four percent of Americans polled showed a general approval for the FBI monitoring those emails deemed suspicious. Thus, it was born the idea for the FBI program: “Carnivore”, which was going to be used as a searching method, allowing the FBI to hopefully home in on potential criminals. Unlike the overall approval of the FBI’s intervention, “Carnivore” was not met with as much of a majority’s approval. Rather, the public seemed to be divided with forty-five percent siding in its favor, forty-five percent opposed to the idea for its ability to potentially interfere with ordinary citizen’s messages, and ten percent claiming indifference. While this may seem slightly tangent to the topic of internet privacy, it is important to consider that at the time of this poll, the general population’s approval on government actions was declining, reaching thirty-one percent versus the forty-one percent it held a decade prior. This figure in collaboration with the majority’s approval of FBI intervention demonstrates an emerging emphasis on the issue of internet privacy in society and more importantly the potential implications it may hold on citizens’ lives.
Currently, as of March 2012, the need for a set of unified privacy policies has been met by the European Union with proposed legislation. The Data Protection Regulation is a proposed set of consistent regulations across the European Union that will protect Internet users from clandestine tracking and unauthorized personal data usage. This regulation will further protect users' privacy rights in two key ways: clearly defining the term “personal data” and increasing punishments for those who violate users' online privacy. In Article 4(2) of the proposed legislation, the definition of personal data is expanded significantly to include any information online that could be traced to an individual. In Articles 77 and 79 of the proposed legislation, appropriate punishments are outlined for many possible violations of users' privacy rights by controllers and effective enforcement of data protection is guaranteed. The Data Protection Regulation will also hold companies accountable for violations of the regulation by implementing a unified legislation outlining specific repercussions for various types of violations based on severity. The CDT, the Center for Democracy & Technology, has carefully evaluated this proposed legislation in detail and officially issued an analysis on March 28, 2012. The Center for Democracy & Technology is a nonprofit organization that advocates for Internet freedom and online privacy through government public policy.
Analyses such as this interpret the governmental propositions for Internet users and promote democracy by allowing all the opportunity to agree or disagree with the proposition prior to its ruling. This analysis is posted publicly on the Internet, in compliance with the mission of CDT, and addresses each section of the Data Protection Regulation and the potential pitfalls of each article. The two major issues the CDT addresses in this analysis of the Data Protection Regulation are the inflexible rules against profiling users based on their Internet usage and the parental consent policy in regards to controlling the online information of children. The European Union seems to be following the lead of the Obama administration’s recently implemented privacy bill and global Internet privacy policies are on the horizon.
WHO IS WATCHING YOU?
Q7: What is/are your privacy policy/policies on the social networking sites?
Social networking sites are some of the most popular websites and tools we use on the Internet. Facebook, Google+, and Twitter have hundreds of millions of users each. Social networks are often built on the idea of sharing posts, photographs, and personal information. Yet they have also become forums for organizing and speech—much of which relies on privacy and pseudonymity.
- Do you want to use your real name? Some social media sites have so-called "real name policies," but these have become more lax over time. If you do not want to use your real name when registering for a social media site, do not.
- When you register, don't provide more information than is necessary. If you are concerned with hiding your identity, use a separate email address. Be aware that your IP address
may be logged at registration. - Choose a strong password and, if possible, enable two-factor authentication.
- Beware of password recovery questions whose answers can be mined from your social media details. For example: “What city were you born in?” or “What is the name of your pet?” You may want to choose password recovery answers that are false. One good way to remember the answers to password recovery questions, should you choose to use false answers for added security, is to note your chosen answers in a password safe.
- Remember that information stored by third parties is subject to their own policies and may be used for commercial purposes or shared with other companies, for example, marketing firms. We know that reading privacy policies is a near-impossible task, but you may want to take a look at sections on how your data is used, when it is shared with other parties, and how the service responds to law enforcement requests.Social networking sites, usually for-profit businesses, often collect sensitive information beyond what you explicitly input—where you are, what interests and advertisements you react to, what other sites you've visited (e.g. through "Like" buttons). It can be helpful to block third-party cookies and use tracker-blocking browser extensions to make sure extraneous information isn't being passively transmitted to third parties.
- Specifically, change the default settings. For example, do you want to share your posts with the public, or only with a specific group of people? Should people be able to find you using your email address or phone number? Do you want your location shared automatically?
- Remember, privacy settings are subject to change. Sometimes, these privacy settings get stronger and more granular; sometimes not. Be sure to pay attention to these changes closely to see if any information that was once private will be shared, or if any additional settings will allow you to take more control of your privacy.
- Remember that you’re not the only person who can give away potentially sensitive data about yourself. Your friends can tag you in photos, report your location, and make their connections to you public in a variety of ways. You may have the option of untagging yourself from these posts, but privacy does not work retroactively. You may want to talk to your friends about what you do and do not feel comfortable having them share about you in public.
Q 8: What’s the rationale behind your privacy policy/policies?
Online social networks are websites that allow users to build connections and relationships to other Internet users. Social networks store information remotely, rather than on a user’s personal computer. Social networking can be used to keep in touch with friends, make new contacts and find people with similar interests and ideas.
So we need to know the information may be safe to post and how to protect it, as well as who is able to access different types of information posted to these networks.
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