Читать реферат по английскому: "Privacy Consumers And The Internet Essay Research" Страница 1

(Назад) (Cкачать работу)

Privacy Consumers And The Internet Essay, Research Paper

Privacy

Consumers and the Internet

Introduction

A trend of great concern is the partnership of major consumer directory services with companies that compile so called ?public-records? databases. Such databases compile records from a wide variety of government agencies, including courts, vital statistics departments, tax rolls, elections records, or agencies that regulate professional licenses. In addition, some companies also purchase data that is mined from questionnaires, applications for credit cards, manufacturer?s warranty information and other commercial sources.

Revenues are often the primary motivators for state agencies that license or sell access to their databases.

Web access to these data aggregators only broadens a growing problem inherent in these data services: consumers do not have access to the public information maintained about them and disseminated by the look-up services. Accordingly, consumers will not be able to check for inaccuracies resulting from transcription or other errors occurring in the process of obtaining or compiling the public information by the look-up services.

In addition to not being able to access the information maintained about them in these massive data warehouses, many of the large data mining companies do not offer individuals the ability to remove their personal data from the databases.

A wide array of personal information about each of us is kept electronically by others ? by medical insurers, employers, credit card companies, banks, phone companies and a wide range of government and private agencies, some of which are in the business to sell our personal information, no matter how private. And new technologies keep arising to develop, collect, store and disseminate the most private information about each of us, with few, if any legal protections.

As a result, Americans suffered a record number of privacy violations, from marketing of prescription drug information to government sales of Department of Motor Vehicles information, including photos, to the Clinton Administration’s plan to assign every American a “unique health identifier” that could be used to create a giant database of our medical records from cradle to grave, without adequate safeguards to prevent unauthorized dissemination.

Internet Privacy: an Oxymoron in Progress

A swirl of recent events only seems to confirm fears that consumers cannot trust their privacy to the Internet.

There are many sources of the problem: data-hungry Internet firms bent on exploiting personal information; inattention to security and persistent technological glitches; and a growing underground of hackers who are willing to take advantage of the situation.

Much of the recent attention was focused on DoubleClick, the Internet ad firm. But several other less publicized incidents have added fuel to the fire.

For instance, Outpost.com, a Web site offering palm pilots and other hi-tech gear, promised to fix a glitch that potentially revealed customers’ detailed transaction summaries, including e-mail, billing and shipping addresses, type of credit card they used, and their order history.

Outpost.com customer James Wynn noticed his order number was in his URL address. When he changed digits in the URL address, he was able to see other customers’ orders. Craig Andrews, an Outpost.com spokesman, told Wired News the problem would be fixed January 24, the day that it was brought to the company’s attention.

In Jacksonville, Florida, the credit card information of 227 area customers of local ISP Community Connections has been exposed for two years because of a glitch in Microsoft Front Page, software that allows subscribers to sign up online. According to the January 28 Gainesville Sun, one of the ISP’s customers discovered the Web address to find the credit card numbers as well as other subscriber data, including name, address, telephone number and passwords. The customer alerted the newspaper, which informed the ISP. Community Connections corrected the error and sent all “exposed” customers a certified letter explaining the situation.

Tom Bailey, Microsoft product manager for Front Page, said Microsoft two years ago instructed ISPs to fix the problem with a free patch. “Since it had been over two years when we first discovered this potential problem, we were pretty confident that it had been resolved,” Bailey said. “Until today.” He added that Microsoft would again contact ISPs. He would not specify how many ISPs he believed to be using the vulnerable, 1997-98 versions of Front Page. Community Connections stressed that there had been no reported victims of credit fraud from the glitch.

The impact of these and other security glitches is softened for some by the fact that “no one was really hurt.” That is why a January 30 story out of the San Jose Mercury News is more unsettling. A network of hackers is constantly seeking to take advantage of weaknesses in ever more popular, high-speed “DSL” Internet connection services. These hackers are not after you, but want to take over your computer in order to launch attacks on others while hiding their identities.

It is not the speed of the connection, but the fact that the user is typically connected for much longer periods of time. A hacker who identified himself as “alkali” said he is always searching for unsecured home systems with a high-speed connection, which he values because he can move data more rapidly. “Cable modems changed my life,” he claimed.

Jerry Asher, a Berkeley subscriber to a Pac Bell DSL service, said he installed a firewall that recently documented attacks from hackers with Internet addresses in North Korea, Germany and Serbia. German hackers, for instance, checked to see

Похожие работы