Introduction
Online privacy or internet privacy is a concern of everyone who sign-ups to the internet, and the history goes since the origin of the internet. Privacy is one of the essential parts of everyone’s life. No matter how much clear someone tries to be, there are a lot many things which are required to be hidden from others. There are pictures, passwords, databases, bank accounts and property details as are necessary to be kept private and not show to the other people. The hackers do the cyber-crime to breach the security firewalls so that they would be able to collect the data which is hidden because of the privacy concerns. There are outnumbered agencies and software developers who are working for the improvement of the online privacy and minimizing the firewall breaches on the internet. There are many good sides as well as bad sides of the online privacy. Also, a lot number of analysts and business development software and strategy developers have recommended the best ways to improve the online privacy. The main aim of the paper is to discuss internet based online privacy in general.
Discussion
According to some analysts and cybersecurity researchers and government officials, there are some points highlighted that could explain why the internet security and online privacy are the most concerned topics in the common public as well as on the official levels. Sometimes there are some business strategies under discussion, and if their privacy is not concerned, they will lose the importance. The NASA experts explain that of there would be no intranet in their sector than they would be the most vulnerable agency in respect of the data snooping. People are highly concerned about the new researchers and the online privacy to NASA matters a lot for keeping things hidden for a specific passage of time. There are some actions from the LinkedIn and Facebook that the accounts being misused and mistreated are closed until the original user will not try to reach them and request for the opening of the account. These actions help for winning the confidence of the users.
People of some specific groups share some particular pictures on those groups only and privacy matters to them while sharing them over there. While thinking about the social networking, the social forums have kept the privacy concerns on the top of anything. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter is the most active social networking web portals which are highly used because of their well efficient security and privacy maintenance standards. Some useful and well firmed social networking portals died in a night because of the lack of data privacy, and people rapidly switched to other, more appropriate social networks. Also for the dating sites, people were highly focused on how the company is maintaining their data privacy. Also, there is a discussion about the data privacy among the users as would the online websites are considering the changing if the data privacy with the passage of time.
The law associates have also discussed the data privacy in details. It is explained that the online privacy is as precious and matters a lot to everyone who has shared even just his phone number on the internet. The internet websites contain millions of terabytes of data of their customers, viewers, sellers, and buyers and they sell this data to the multinational branding corporations for the advertisement, analysis and research purpose and the purpose to fulfill is only to earn money. The personal data is highly significant and private to an individual, but any of the social networks does not concern it. The news agencies are highly concerned about the news from some business, its ownership, a celebrity, his life, way of spending time and many other things. They all could be retrieved from the internet. Retrieving the data of anyone from the online forums is easy. A single line of a chat being exposed to the public could change the way of thinking of the million number of fans all around the world about a celebrity or a reputed brand like Aamir Khan and Coca-Cola.
There are many good sides as well as bad sides of the online privacy. The discussion should be started with the bad side. The breaking of the online privacy of an individual could be harmful, and every American is facing this all the time. The advertising agencies buy the phone numbers from the telecommunication companies which causes an outnumbered advertising calls and messages interrupting the busy schedules of an American. The first amendment in the United States is in favor of all these things, but the advertising agencies use our data and immortalize the privacy which is needed to be kept private rather than to be provided to the people who use our data for personal benefit. The good side that the online privacy helps us to move in freedom rather than to be kept under observation. It should be noticed that the privacy helps us to be self-expressive, creative, explain our mind thoughts and to write down the plans. There are some studies which demonstrate that the internet privacy is highly significant and keeping the data privacy of an individual would help him to act innovatively rather than to concentrate on his moves for the privacy concerns.
A case study is about the online privacy concerns. In this case study, the highlighted analysis was about the fear-based theorizing for exploration of the online privacy. The self-control associated with the decreased internet scam victimization as well as some other factors which affect the online privacy. The study at the end explained that it creates the dear among the people about the internet privacy breaches and people don’t trust the internet at all after finding that the data on the web could be accessed by anyone anywhere from the world.
Another study was conducted by the computer science and technology experts about the internet privacy concerns in which they aimed to find the behavior of the students about the online privacy paradox. The study was an experiment on the students of Israeli academia in which through the quantitative method the investigation was conducted. It was a questionnaire and a closed end questions in which the students were asked some different questions. By those questions, the study was conducted which was regression analysis and it showed that the computer science and information science students have deficient levels of behaving against the privacy paradox. The accounting and business management students have relatively higher.
All the studies currently being completed about the online privacy concerns are judging that the one associated with the internet is concerned about his privacy or not. The answer is yes. Even the one who has no hidden information but still he needs to know the protection and privacy levels of his data. Nobody leaves his data open and unprotected on the internet. There are many institutes which are discouraging the online privacy braches officially and many countries’ governments are working on securing their citizen’s privacy online as well as offline.
Some analysts are discussing this fact and are recommending about the online privacy. More than a decade is passed, and the privacy issues are not resolved. The different analysis is under progress which is concerned about the online privacy, and it is highlighted that they will finalize the new set of policies which would help to regain the trust of the common public in many ways. One of the main aspects which are discussed is that the corporations like Google and Microsoft were using the customer data for the advertising purposes, but now the process will be done as the same but in a very different way. The artificial intelligence is enhanced, and the direction of searching the relevance is wholly changed. Now the data is neither accessed nor moved from your access to anywhere, due to the privacy, the related advertisements, bonding, and linkages are being made so that the customer would be satisfied as well as the online confidentiality would also be maintained.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, it can be concluded that the online privacy is one of the leading aspects of an internet user. It would be unhealthy if his data would be misused and mistreated. The advertisement agencies are trying hard to find the ways to reach into the world’s known corporation’s databases, but because of the privacy, they are not allowed to do so. The good and bad sides of the privacy are also discussed. Some of the most general social issues raised because of the lack of online privacy, or if the online privacy is damaged, then it is highly risky. Cyberbullying is one of the primary results of weak or breached cyber privacy. Due to weak online privacy, the young people used their classmates and friend’s data, pictures, phone numbers, and addresses in wrong way which led to bullying and severe effects. Many adolescents tried to suicide because of the social abuse of their private data exposed to their friends.
Works Cited
Chen, Hongliang, Christopher E. Beaudoin, and Traci Hong. “Securing online privacy: An empirical test on Internet scam victimization, online privacy concerns, and privacy protection behaviors.” Computers in Human Behavior 70 (2017): 291-302.
Clemons, Eric K., and Jordyn Banattar. “Regulating Online Privacy: Some Policy Guidelines, Including Guidelines for International Harmonization.” Proceedings of the 51st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. 2018.
Weinberger, Maor, Maayan Zhitomirsky-Geffet, and Dan Bouhnik. “Predictors of online privacy paradox behavior among students.” iConference 2017 Proceedings (2017).
