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Internet Privacy And The Internet

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Internet privacy is an issue that has constantly taken up a portion of the world stage for many years. Legislators are even now trying to find the delicate balance between Internet privacy and Internet security. The medium of the Internet is simply too new to be completely understood by lawmakers, and it will take some time before there is a complete grasp.

Online Privacy and Facebook
Nowadays, the new generation life without Facebook is almost unthinkable. Since its inception in 2004, this popular social network service has quickly become both a basic tool for and a mirror of social interaction, personal identity, and network building among students. Social network sites deeply penetrate their users’ everyday life and, as pervasive …show more content…

Only Google scored worse; Facebook tied with six other companies. This rating was based on concerns about data matching, data mining, transfers to other companies, and in particular Facebook’s curious policy that it ‘‘may also collect information about [its users] other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services, and other users of the Facebook service’’ (‘‘Facebook Principles,’’ 2007, Information We Collect section, para. 8).
Already in 2005, Jones and Soltren identified serious flaws in Facebook’s set-up that would facilitate privacy breaches and data mining. At the time, nearly 2 years after Facebook’s inception, users’ passwords were still being sent without encryption, and thus could be easily intercepted by a third party (Jones & Soltren, 2005). This has since been corrected. A simple procedure could also be used to download all public profiles at a school, since Facebook used predictable URLs for profile pages (Jones & Soltren, 2005). The authors also noted that Facebook gathered information about its users from other sources unless the user specifically opted out. As of September 2007, the opt-out choice was no longer available but the data collection policy was still in force (‘‘Facebook Principles,’’

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