Due to the web is increasingly important in people’s lives, one of the issues users raise is their desire to known that their privacy is being protected when they go online.
Use of the internet consists of the use of e-mail websites, social networking sites, organizational and institutional websites and browsing of other websites. Internet privacy refers to the control a person has over the information related to him or her and can be considered as part of computer privacy.
*Accessing individuals’ private E-mail conversations and computer records and collecting and sharing information about individuals gained from their visits to Internet websites and newsgroups (violation of privacy).
*Always knowing where a person is, especially as mobile and paging services become more closely associated with people rather than places (computer monitoring).
*Using customer information gained from many sources to market additional business services (computer matching).
*Collecting telephone numbers, E-mail address, credit numbers, and other personal information to build individual customer profiles (unauthorized personal files). In certain websites which provides online shopping facility users are asked to give their credit card details, passwords and PINs.
Privacy issues arise because very internet transaction leaves an important artifact of every transaction the individual did when searching for information, shopping or banking. This audit trail has caused many people to be concerned that this data may be inappropriately used.
Important internet privacy issues
