Data Privacy and Tracking

Data Privacy
"'Data privacy, also called information privacy, is the aspect of information technology (IT) that deals with the ability an organization or individual has to determine what data in a computer system can be shared with third parties.'"

"'On the internet you almost always give away a lot of information about yourself: Unencrypted e-mails can be read by the administrators of the email server, if the connection is not encrypted, and also the internet service provider and other parties sniffing the traffic of that connection are able to know the contents. Furthermore, the same applies to any kind of traffic generated on the Internet (web-browsing, instant messaging, among others) In order not to give away too much personal information, e-mails can be encrypted and browsing of web pages as well as other online activities can be done traceless via anonymizers, or, in cases those are not trusted, by open source distributed anonymizers, so called mix nets.'"

Personal files that are not sent over the internet are also at risk from hackers and viruses. All information sent over the internet is valuable in some way. If a criminal gains access to someone’s credit card number they can become a victim of  identity theft. Data protection is very important, without proper protection important information can be easily accessed by others. Having an antivirus software is a great way to prevent you computer from being damaged making it more difficult for hackers and viruses to access important files.

Tracking
Web tracking in the act of seeing how a user interacts with the world wide web. A Cookie "'is a small piece of data sent from a website and stored in a user's web browser while the user is browsing that website. Every time the user loads the website, the browser sends the cookie back to the server to notify the website of the user's previous activity. Cookies were designed to be a reliable mechanism for websites to remember stateful information (such as items in a shopping cart) or to record the user's browsing activity. Cookies are commonly used as a way to gather long-term records of an individual's browsing history.'"This bring up many privacy concerns. Cookies can store any form content that is entered on a webpage. This can be usernames, passwords, or even credit card information. Companies will use information gathered on an individual from tracking cookies and send them personalized ads based on your browsing history. this creates a more personalized web for the user. You can prevent tracking cookies from being saved on your computer by going through the setting in your web browser and set your browser to delete all cookies once you close out of the web browser. There are also some software that you can download to delete all cookies your your computer.

Identity Theft
"Identity theft and identity fraud are terms used to refer to all types of crime in which someone wrongfully obtains and uses another person's personal data in some way that involves fraud or deception, typically for economic gain. Unlike your fingerprints, which are unique to you and cannot be given to someone else for their use, your personal data ­ especially your Social Security number, your bank account or credit card number, your telephone calling card number, and other valuable identifying data ­ can be used, if they fall into the wrong hands, to personally profit at your expense. In the United States and Canada, for example, many people have reported that unauthorized persons have taken funds out of their bank or financial accounts, or, in the worst cases, taken over their identities altogether, running up vast debts and committing crimes while using the victim's names. In many cases, a victim's losses may include not only out-of-pocket financial losses, but substantial additional financial costs associated with trying to restore his reputation in the community and correcting erroneous information for which the criminal is responsible."