Internet Privacy

Internet Privacy
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Internet Privacy
Internet privacy refers to the right of individuals using the internet to the choice of not sharing their displayed information during their browsing sessions. Internet usage collects information from the user such as personal information like email addresses and other information regarding behaviour on the website. The websites collecting such information can thus, use this data for commercial purposes such as advertisements or share it with other third parties. Additionally, the increased usage of social media by people of all ages continues to increase the amount of information about these users on the internet. Consequently, the continued use and development of the internet poses a great security risk to users due to the lack of adequate internet privacy caused by infringement of these rights.
Firstly, a huge problem caused by the lack of internet privacy is the tracking behaviour of companies used to display advertisements. It is evident that once an individual clicks on a particular product while using the internet, pesky advertisements tend to pop up everywhere on other sites that the user visits. Additionally, the trackers log all types of information available from a user including activities such as keystrokes on a keyboard to be used to predict usage activities. This unwanted tracking that does not get explicit permission by the user infringes on the individual’s internet privacy by collecting personal data not necessarily required to enhance the user experience but rather for commercial purposes. With a majority of large internet companies such as Google relying on advertisement revenue, there is an increased competition on collecting information from their users to aid in their targeted advertising (Smutny, Vaclav, & Cermak, 2019). Such behaviour is intrusive for a number of individuals who may not wish to be tracked. Therefore, the continued actions by online companies to create profiles for each user, including browsing habits, creates a nuisance and privacy issues for users that may not prefer such advertisements. Individuals must thus, have control on which type of information or data they may be willing to share with such companies to ensure that they are adequately protected.
Apart from that, governments may use this opportunity to spy on their citizens using directives that allow law enforcement agencies to use mass surveillance. Therefore, when there are laws that enable the governments to monitor internet usage of its citizens then their privacy is compromised. With such mass surveillance activities by govern...