Internet Privacy Issues
by Bertrand FoxWhen using the internet, several internet privacy issues become apparent. These relate to how data is captured and used regarding your personal details. And how your privacy may be affected on the internet as a result of what is published.
Every web server is a kind of computer, so it can efficiently extract, process and store data. The data is what is revealed by your web browser, time and your IP address.
When you visit a web site, your data may be collected by multiple marketing companies. For example, the web site owner, the company serving advertising on the site, and the company providing visitor tracking statistics. So just visiting a web site results in you providing marketing information raising internet privacy issues.
The main identifying data that is recorded is your IP address. This is a unique number that identifies your connection to the Internet. As long as your modem is actively connected to the Internet, your IP address should remain constant.
It is easy to capture your IP address and do a reverse lookup to find out which ISP you are using. This also gives an indication of where in the world you are situated.
The other method of identifying you is by means of cookies. These may be automatically accepted by your web browser and stored for months or maybe years.
Cookies can be used to detect that you have visited a website before, together with some data regarding your last visit. However, only the website that plants the cookie can retrieve it.
Marketers would love to know which sites you regularly visit, i.e. your browser history. This is so they can display Ads related to your interests. They can build this profile by sharing data between themselves where your IP address is the tracking variable.
Otherwise they only have referring page data which may be made available by your web browser.
So unless you enter personal information into web forms, you are not revealing much about you personally.
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