The Dark-Side of the Internet

The internet is a cluster of computer linked together through a network. When you access a website, you are reading information from a remote computer, server or a database. So it would only make sense that when you save information, especially on another website, the data will be saved on the respective computer you are reading it from. This means that any information that is transferred over the internet is not going to be owned by the user, including this blogger site.

I had a project last semester in which I had to analyze several different privacy policies from various service-providing websites. One property in the policies that was repetitive among all websites, was the fact that they owned your information. One excerpt I remember from the project came from RedSox.Com, which was rather peculiar, it stated:

"Business Transfers. As time passes, MLB Advanced Media, L.P. may be sold along with its assets, or other transactions may occur in which customer information is one of the business assets transferred. In such a case, the customer information which we have gathered may be one of the business assets we transfer."

http://mlb.mlb.com/bos/help/bos_help_about_privacy.jsp

They are basically telling you that they own your information and they can even claim it as an asset! That was news to me.

When you are "surfing the internet," you quickly forget how vulnerable you are. Software can easily be running in the background of your computer that can record your keystrokes, mouse movement and even when you open your optical CD drive. Although that would realistically only happen if you had a virus on your computer (specifically Trojans). So even if a ecommerce website is telling you that making your credit card transaction is completely safe and is encrypted a million times, other factors can still attack your privacy.

I myself would never give away personal information over the internet without knowing what the website will do with it. For all I know, they will start sending me hundreds of pointless mailings and ads. Also, I have only exchanged my social security number a few times on the internet, to sign up for a credit card and to manage my loans/finances. Regardless, you should try to offer your private information as seldom as possible, only reveal information about yourself that you wouldn't mind millions of people to see.