Essay: User privacy on the web

The introduction of the new technologies and more especially the internet is a double edge sword. In one hand, it brought the ability to connect people who are geographically far apart at virtually no cost. It also provides the access to all the information needed including dictionaries, tutorials, forums or essays directly from our computer. In addition, it is an endless source of entertainment with games, social media or video streaming. However, all these advantages come at a cost as demonstrated by the recent attack on TalkTalk, an English telecommunication company, which resulted in the theft of details about more than 1.2 million clients[1]. This crime highlights two main problem about the web: users’ privacy and its security. However, these two “new” issues are not really new as other previous innovations such as the printed communication such as the press and post mail or the telephone were confronted to the same problems. Nevertheless, the internet also comes with new technical solutions to balance its weaknesses.
The biggest concern about the web is user’s privacy. “Privacy is the claim of individuals to be left alone, free from surveillance or interference from other individuals or organizations, including the state”[2]. Geolocation is a new trend in social network to notify your “friends” where one user is at the moment. This new functionality obviously adds up to the user experience and his satisfaction when he wants to but it is not always the case. In fact, some people may not agree on the fact that their favourite social network is tracking their movements at any time. However, Facebook, for example, has automatically set up the option to get a user’s location when using “Messenger”. The problem is that it is totally legal insofar as it was mentioned in their terms and conditions which every user had to agree on in order to use the service. Nevertheless, it wasn’t clear for everyone who signed this paper as they are usually extremely long and ambiguous. For example, Paypal’s terms and conditions length is more than 36 000 words and those of LinkedIn and Facebook have been trialled for their “obscurity and length”[2]. Obviously, using this type of service can reveal your position, who you are, where you have been and when. But are we safe when using an app with geolocation service which promise us to be anonymous? According to BBC[3], a study has found that only four information are necessary to retrieve someone identity even though he thinks he was anonymous using his phone. These four information are the time, the date, the user’s location and his phone serial number and when combined they can easily lead to the identification of its owner and his movements.
Moreover, our identity and our position are not the only thing that are recorded. Every computer can monitor and save the network communications that pass through. For example, when a user is browsing the web, many websites store cookies which are pieces of information saved directly in the hard drive of one user. When a website using the cookies system is visited, it can check whether the user already possess cookies and if so, it knows the previous actions of this user. The reason websites use cookies is because this information can be sold to businesses. For instance, if one user has visited a shopping website and has looked at two pairs of shoes, this information will be stored in the cookies and will be sold to businesses so they can advertise similar shoes or products to the interested client. Additionally, as data storage costs are decreasing, it allows companies to create exhaustive and detailed databases at an affordable price. These databases combined with powerful tools to analyse data makes the Profiling, “the analysis of a person’s psychological and behavioural characteristics to assist in identifying categories of people”[4] really effective. Moreover, cookies can also store email addresses so businesses can directly send specific advertisements to potential clients depending on their profiles. Even large companies such as Google is using similar tools to read through the emails sent or received via Gmail, a free web-based e-mail service[2]. After analysing it, Google sells this critical information to interested businesses. However, these can be considered as Spams which are “unwanted or intrusive advertising on the internet” according to Oxford Dictionaries[5]. The problem is that spams come at a very high cost for companies that receive them through their employees. In fact, due to the amount of time needed to deal with them which includes network and computing resources, spams are estimated to cost more than $50 billion per year[2].
But is this problem of privacy and intrusive access in our daily lives really new? Similar issue are encountered when using the phone or reading the journals for example. In fact, the collect of our personal information and our location when using social media may be avoided by not using them but it is not enough to protect our privacy. According to BBC[3], the four pieces of information mentioned earlier can be retrieved only when making a phone call. In fact, throughout the UK, IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity) catchers towers were deployed in London, they allow the police and others to get the location of each mobile phone user. It is done by tricking the phone to believe these towers are real cell phone tower in order to collect “the international mobile subscriber and electronic serial number (ESN)”.[6] Initially launched to keep a close watch on criminals, the system cannot determine whether or not a person is a criminal, resulting in a general watch. These towers can track every phone which are in a 10 square kilometres range. This is not the only way we are watched as the USA Today reported in 2006[7], three major telecommunications companies (AT&T, Verizon Communications and Bell South) have cooperated with the National Security Agency to turn over records of their users’ phone calls to fight terrorism. Even though these records only contain phone numbers, it is easy to cross-reference with databases available on the internet, according to James X. Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology[8]. This is finally the same privacy problem as the internet and the creation of databases concerning every user. Regarding the intrusive access to our daily lives, the printing press has basically the same problem as their methods are similar to those of the internet. In fact, to receive the newspapers at home every morning, the clients needed to give his details such as first name, last name or physical address which were traditionally stored in a paper-based database. These details are now stored on servers exactly as the databases from the internet. Moreover, the problem with spams is the same with advertisements in the newspapers as they can be considered intrusive as they are not easily avoidable.
As we are constantly watched and databases made of our private information are created without our consent nor control, it is legitimate to wonder if these information are secure and who can access it. The main threat from the internet is the theft of identity. In fact, the thief steals your personal information such as name, address, credit card number or social security number through different processes. The two main techniques are the hacking and the fishing. While the first one needs computers skills to get into your email account or other personal account, the second only consists of sending fraudulent emails disguised into serious mails to a tremendous amount of people and then wait for the user to click to infect his computer. [9]. Security on the internet is a major concern as one third of world’s computers may be infected by poisonous malware according to the Anti-Phishing Group[10]. Moreover, this issue is not really new as our data are not as protected as we would think. A case in point is the recent thief of 400 000 TalkTalk customers’ bank details. In fact, his chief revealed that users’ details weren’t “encrypted, nor are [we] legally required to encrypt it”[11]. However, this security problem is not really new as a post mail including our personal data can be stolen or intercepted as well. One technique to intercept a post mail is to use steam to discretely open a letter then repost it. Another one is to use Royal Mail’s redirection service: identity thieves redirect number of your mails so you can’t notice when an important one fails to arrive. The same problem can occur when making phone calls. In fact, in 2010, a hacker showed how easy it was to listening phone calls of more than 80% of the world’s phones using some devices of a total value of $1500. Two large antennas and a laptop are enough to intercept and/or disrupt a phone conversation. And according to the Mr. Paged, the hacker, “the thing about band jamming is there is no way to defend against it”.[12]
Thus, the privacy and its security are central concerns when using the internet but they are not different from the problems we had before with other inventions such as the phone or the printed press. But as a new technology, the internet also comes with modern solutions.
We mentioned previously that websites use the system of cookies to retrieve information about the users. But does it mean we are vulnerable when using the internet? Not to a certain extent, for example, in European countries, the law imposes businesses to inform their clients about the use of cookies prior retrieving these information. Legally, every use of personal information must be done following this process: the collector reveals how they expect to use these information before collecting the data. It includes the measures that will help protecting “confidentiality, integrity, and quality of the data”.[2] Then the consumer must be able to review the information collected and contest if necessary. Finally, the website needs to acknowledge they are responsible for the security of the information collected. This system offers a viable legal protection but is not used by the majority of users. Moreover, internet browser allows their users to clean the cookies that have been collected, however, some are invisible therefore inerasable. It is the case for the “Flash Cookies” made by Adobe Flash plug-in, they act the same way as ordinary cookies but can only be accessed through websites using Flash application “which is used by almost every page that most people access” according to the Guardian.[13] They are still tools that can help their customers to know what type of information are given to certain websites. For example, the Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P), convert websites privacy policies into a standardised text that can be understood by the user. This way, he can decide in full knowledge of the cause whether the website respects his privacy or not.[14]
There is also another solution to avoid being tracked on the internet: it is the use of VPN (Virtual Private Network). The basic working of the VPN is that two computers are connected to a virtual private networks, this way they can benefit from the advantages and protection of a private network. [15] This can be done by encryption methods or tunnels methods. Using a VPN connection virtually ensures that privacy is respected. However, this system comes at a cost as they are usually either not free, slow or risky. In fact, to ensure the quality of the service, certain VPN have made their services lucrative such as Private Internet Access or TorGuard. Free VPN are usually slow because the bandwidth is not sufficient for every users and advertisements may slow down the connection as well. Others are risky because, unlike paid VPN, they can’t protect the user when they purposely click on an advertisement that redirects to a malware.[16]
Regarding the security, there are various cyber protection tools to protect our data. For instance, Google offers a minimal protection against advertisements through its extension store for Google Chrome. One particularly, Ad Block is an add-on that allows to hide every type of advertisements that it can detect. But obviously, a free software won’t be as efficient and as complete as a real paid cyber protection. For example, SurfControl allows its users to filter potentially dangerous e-mail and website content including advertisements and inappropriate contents. This software doesn’t act as an URL filter but more like a “web gateways” meaning that it can defend in real time as malwares can now act dynamically after they passes through certain obstacle such as a traditional URL filter. According to SurfControl, their software is capable of analysing both inbound and outbound traffic whereas URL filter can only inspect inbound traffic.[17]
These tools are efficient to protect our privacy but are fitting the web as they are meant to be use in coordination with the internet.
In conclusion, the user privacy and his security when using the web is definitely a real problem but is nothing new when compared with the same problem encountered by using other technologies such as the printed communications or the phone. But the scale that the internet has taken makes these issue more important than ever. However, the internet has also provided solutions to address these issues such as the VPN, P3P or web gateways for example. They use the very mechanisms of the internet but add the needed protection for their users’ privacy. For example, the web gateways doesn’t change the protocol of connection used by the web but add an extra process to it to detect hazardous or unusual processes. This way, the new solutions that came with the web fit it as they complement it rather than replacing a part of it.
References
[1] BBC, “TalkTalk reveals exact scale of website cyber-attack”. [Online]. Available: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34675235. [Accessed the 17/11/2015].
[2]Pearson Education, “Ethical and social issues in information systems”.[Online]. Available: http://www.prenhall.com/behindthebook/0132304619/pdf/laudon%20MIS10_CH-04%20FINAL.pdf. [Accessed online the 13/11/2015]
[3]BBC, “The biggest myth about phone privacy”.[Online]. Available: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150206-biggest-myth-about-phone-privacy [Accessed online the 15/11/2015]
[4]Oxford Dictionaries[Online]. Available: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/profiling. [Accessed the 15/11/2015]
[5]Oxford Dictionaries [Online]. Available: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/fr/definition/anglais_americain/spam [Accessed online the 15/11/2015]
[6] Coventry Telegraph, “Is your phone under surveillance? Everything you need to know about the UK’s rogue ‘Stingray’ mobile phone towers”.[Online]. Available: http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/your-phone-under-surveillance-everything-9435998 [Accessed the 14/11/2015]
[7]USA Today, “NSA has massive database of Americans’ phone calls”.[Online]. Available: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm. [Accessed online the 15/11/2015].
[8] James X. Dempsey, “Privacy’s Gap: The Largely Non-Existent Legal Framework for Government Mining of Commercial Data” (May 19, 2003), available at http://www.cdt.org/security/usapatriot/030528cdt.pdf. See also “Matrices of Laws Governing Governmental and Commercial Access to Privately Held Data,” accompanying the report of the Markle Task Force on National Security in the Information Age, http://www.markletaskforce.org/privacyrules.html.
[9]IST, “Risks on the internet”.[Online]. Available: https://ist.mit.edu/security/internet
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/80707.html. [Accessed the 16/11/2015].
[10]TechNewsWorld, “Report: Malware poisons one-third of world’s computers”.[Online]. Available: http://www.technewsworld.com/story/80707.html.%5BAccessed the 16/11/2015].
[11] The register, “TalkTalk attack: ‘No legal obligation to encrypt customer bank details’, says chief”.[Online]. Available: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/25/talktalk_boss_no_legal_obligation_to_encrypt_customer_bank_details/. [Accessed the 17/11/2015]
[12]VentureBeat, “Hacker show how he can intercept cell phone calls with $1500 device”.[Online] Available: http://venturebeat.com/2010/07/31/hacker-shows-how-he-can-intercept-cell-phone-calls-for-1500/. [Accessed the 17/11/2015].
[13] The Guardian, “When the cookies crumbled, so did your web anonymity”.[Online] Available: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/05/cookies-crumbled-internet-anonymity. [Accessed the 15/11/2015]
[14]W3C, “The Platform for Privacy Preferences”.[Online]. Available: http://www.w3.org/TR/P3P/#overview_of_prfs.%5BAccessed the 14/11/2015]
[15]TechNet, “What is VPN?”.[Online]. Available: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc739294(v=ws.10).aspx. [Accessed the 14/11/2015]
[16] VPNExpress, “The problem with free VPNs”.[Online]. Available: http://vpnexpress.net/the-problem-with-free-vpns/. [Accessed the 14/11/2015].
[17]Raytheon,”SurfControl”.[Online]. Available: http://fr.websense.com/content/surfcontrol-welcome.aspx [Accessed the 16/11/2015]
SurfControl offers tools for tracking Web and e-mail activity and for filtering unauthorized e-mail and Web site content. The benefits of monitoring employee e-mail and Internet use should be balanced with the need to respect employee privacy.
SOLUTION : There are now tools to help users determine the kind of personal data that can be extracted by Web sites. The Platform for Privacy Preferences, known as P3P, enables automatic communication of privacy policies between an e-commerce site and its visitors. P3P provides a standard for communicating a Web site’s privacy policy to Internet users and for comparing that policy to the user’s preferences or to other standards, such as the FTC’s new FIP guidelines or the European Directive on Data Protection. Users can use P3P to select the level of privacy they wish to maintain when interacting with the Web site. The P3P standard allows Web sites to publish privacy policies in a form that computers can understand. Once it is codified according to P3P rules, the privacy policy becomes part of the software for individual Web pages (see Figure 4-4). Users of Microsoft Internet Explorer Web browsing software can access and read the P3P site’s privacy policy and a list of all cookies coming from the site. Internet Explorer enables users to adjust their computers to screen out all cookies or let in selected cookies based on specific levels of privacy. For example, the “medium” level accepts cookies from first-party host sites that have opt-in or opt-out policies but rejects third-party cookies that use personally identifiable information without an opt-in policy. However, P3P only works with Web sites of members of the World Wide Web Consortium who have translated their Web site privacy policies into P3P format. The technology will display cookies from Web sites that are not part of the consortium, but users will not be able to obtain sender information or privacy statements. Many users may also need to be educated about interpreting company privacy statements and P3P levels of privacy.
==== P3P enables Web sites to translate their privacy policies into a standard format that can be read by the user’s Web browser software. The user’s Web browser software evaluates the Web site’s privacy policy to determine whether it is compatible with the user’s privacy preferences.
The introduction of new information technology has a ripple effect, raising new ethical, social, and political issues that must be dealt with on the individual, social, and political levels. These issues have five moral dimensions: information rights and obligations, property rights and obligations, system quality, quality of life, and accountability and control.
Suddenly individual actors are confronted with new situations often not covered by the old rules. Social institutions cannot respond overnight to these ripples—it may take years to develop etiquette, expectations, social responsibility, politically correct attitudes, or approved rules. Political institutions also require time before developing new laws and often require the demonstration of real harm before they act. In the meantime, you may have to act.
Information rights and obligations. What information rights do individuals and organizations possess with respect to themselves? What can they protect? What obligations do individuals and organizations have concerning this information?
Property rights and obligations. How will traditional intellectual property rights be protected in a digital society in which tracing and accounting for ownership are difficult and ignoring such property rights is so easy?
Accountability and control. Who can and will be held accountable and liable for the harm done to individual and collective information and property rights?
System quality. What standards of data and system quality should we demand to protect individual rights and the safety of society?
Quality of life. What values should be preserved in an information- and knowledge-based society? Which institutions should we protect from violation? Which cultural values and practices are supported by the new information technology?
Ethical issues :
TREND /IMPACT Computing power doubles every 18 months =>More organizations depend on computer systems for critical operations.
Data storage costs rapidly declining => Organizations can easily maintain detailed databases on individuals. These advances in data storage have made the routine violation of individual privacy both cheap and effective.
Data analysis advances =>Companies can analyze vast quantities of data gathered on individuals to develop detailed profiles of individual behaviour. to use in identifying customers. For instance, the major search firms like Google, America Online (AOL), MSN, and Yahoo! maintain detailed search histories on the more than 75 million Americans who use Internet search engines everyday and who generate more than 200 million searches each day. These huge collections of “consumer intentions” become the natural targets of private firms looking for market advantage, government agencies, and private investigators. What you thought was private, in fact, can quickly become public. Companies with products to sell purchase relevant information from these sources to help them more finely target their marketing campaigns. The use of computers to combine data from multiple sources and create electronic dossiers of detailed information on individuals is called profiling
nonobvious relationship awareness (NORA). Compare information to create association between people using their phone calls or where there live=> anticipate criminal activities (good for homeland security but threatening privacy) NORA technology can take information about people from disparate sources and find obscure, nonobvious relationships. It might discover, for example, that an applicant for a job at a casino shares a telephone number with a known criminal and issue an alert to the hiring manager.
Networking advances and the Internet => Copying data from one location to another and accessing personal data from remote locations are much easier.
The quality of the data they maintain can be unreliable, causing people to lose their jobs and their savings. In one case, Boston Market fired an employee after receiving a background check from ChoicePoint that showed felony convictions
Although in the past, business firms would often pay for the legal defense of their employees enmeshed in civil charges and criminal investigations, now firms are encouraged to cooperate with prosecutors to reduce charges against the entire firm for obstructing investigations. These developments mean that, more than ever, as a manager or an employee, you will have to decide for yourself what constitutes proper legal and ethical conduct.
Ethics refers to the principles of right and wrong that individuals, acting as free moral agents, use to make choices to guide their behaviors. Information systems raise new ethical questions for both individuals and societies because they create opportunities for intense social change, and thus threaten existing distributions of power, money, rights, and obligations. Like other technologies, such as steam engines, electricity, the telephone, and the radio, information technology can be used to achieve social progress, but it can also be used to commit crimes and threaten cherished social values
Internet and digital firm technologies make it easier than ever to assemble, integrate, and distribute information, unleashing new concerns about the appropriate use of customer information, the protection of personal privacy, and the protection of intellectual property. Insiders with special knowledge can “fool” information systems by submitting phony records, and diverting cash, on a scale unimaginable in the pre-computer era.
Privacy is the claim of individuals to be left alone, free from surveillance or interference from other individuals or organizations, including the state
1. Notice/awareness (core principle). Web sites must disclose their information practices before collecting data. Includes identification of collector; uses of data; other recipients of data; nature of collection (active/inactive); voluntary or required status; consequences of refusal; and steps taken to protect confidentiality, integrity, and quality of the data. 2. Choice/consent (core principle). There must be a choice regime in place allowing consumers to choose how their information will be used for secondary purposes other than supporting the transaction, including internal use and transfer to third parties. 3. Access/participation. Consumers should be able to review and contest the accuracy and completeness of data collected about them in a timely, inexpensive process. 4. Security. Data collectors must take responsible steps to assure that consumer information is accurate and secure from unauthorized use. 5. Enforcement. There must be in place a mechanism to enforce FIP principles. This can involve self-regulation, legislation giving consumers legal remedies for violations, or federal statutes and regulations.
2.
European countries do not allow businesses to use personally identifiable information without consumers’ prior consent.
The directive requires companies to inform people when they collect information about them and disclose how it will be stored and used. Customers must provide their informed consent before any company can legally use data about them, and they have the right to access that information, correct it, and request that no further data be collected. Informed consent can be defined as consent given with knowledge of all the facts needed to make a rational decision
Each computers is capable of monitoring, capturing, and storing communications that pass through it
Identity (cookies p19+ ip adress) / telephone (physical cable)
Google has been using tools to scan the contents of messages received by users of its free Web-based e-mail service called Gmail. Ads that users see when they read their e-mail are related to the subjects of these messages. Google’s service offers users 1 gigabyte of storage space—far more than any of its competitors—but privacy advocates find the practice offensive.
SOLUTION : There are now tools to help users determine the kind of personal data that can be extracted by Web sites. The Platform for Privacy Preferences, known as P3P, enables automatic communication of privacy policies between an e-commerce site and its visitors. P3P provides a standard for communicating a Web site’s privacy policy to Internet users and for comparing that policy to the user’s preferences or to other standards, such as the FTC’s new FIP guidelines or the European Directive on Data Protection. Users can use P3P to select the level of privacy they wish to maintain when interacting with the Web site. The P3P standard allows Web sites to publish privacy policies in a form that computers can understand. Once it is codified according to P3P rules, the privacy policy becomes part of the software for individual Web pages (see Figure 4-4). Users of Microsoft Internet Explorer Web browsing software can access and read the P3P site’s privacy policy and a list of all cookies coming from the site. Internet Explorer enables users to adjust their computers to screen out all cookies or let in selected cookies based on specific levels of privacy. For example, the “medium” level accepts cookies from first-party host sites that have opt-in or opt-out policies but rejects third-party cookies that use personally identifiable information without an opt-in policy. However, P3P only works with Web sites of members of the World Wide Web Consortium who have translated their Web site privacy policies into P3P format. The technology will display cookies from Web sites that are not part of the consortium, but users will not be able to obtain sender information or privacy statements. Many users may also need to be educated about interpreting company privacy statements and P3P levels of privacy.
==== P3P enables Web sites to translate their privacy policies into a standard format that can be read by the user’s Web browser software. The user’s Web browser software evaluates the Web site’s privacy policy to determine whether it is compatible with the user’s privacy preferences.
PROPERTY RIGHTS: INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY Contemporary information systems have severely challenged existing law and social practices that protect private intellectual property. Intellectual property is considered to be intangible property created by individuals or corporations. Information technology has made it difficult to protect intellectual property because computerized information can be so easily copied or distributed on networks. Intellectual property is subject to a variety of protection under three different legal traditions: trade secrets, copyright, and patent law.
Any intellectual work product—a formula, device, pattern, or compilation of data-used for a business purpose can be classified as a trade secret
The limitation of trade secret protection is that, although virtually all software programs of any complexity contain unique elements of some sort, it is difficult to prevent the ideas in the work from falling into the public domain when the software is widely distributed.
Digital media differ from physical media like books, periodicals, CDs, and newspapers in terms of ease of replication; ease of transmission; ease of alteration; difficulty in classifying a software work as a program, book, or even music; compactness—making theft easy; and difficulties in establishing uniqueness.
The proliferation of electronic networks, including the Internet, has made it even more difficult to protect intellectual property. Before widespread use of networks, copies of software, books, magazine articles, or films had to be stored on physical media, such as paper, computer disks, or videotape, creating some hurdles to distribution. Using networks, information can be more widely reproduced and distributed. A study conducted by the International Data Corporation for the Business Software Alliance found that more than onethird of the software worldwide was counterfeit or pirated, and the Business Software Alliance reported $29 billion in yearly losses from software piracy (Geitner, 2004; Lohr, 2004).
Solution : Mechanisms are being developed to sell and distribute books, articles, and other intellectual property legally on the Internet, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 is providing some copyright protection. Internet service providers (ISPs) are required to take down sites of copyright infringers that they are hosting once they are notified of the problem
DATA QUAlity = journal et journal en ligne. Perfectible mais pressé par le temps ou l’argent. Conséquence social, fausse info. Although software bugs and facility catastrophes are likely to be widely reported in the press, by far the most common source of business system failure is data quality. Few companies routinely measure the quality of their data, but studies of individual organizations report data error rates ranging from 0.5 to 30 percent (Gilhooly, 2005).
that more and more people will be working when traditionally they would have been playing or communicating with family and friends. The work umbrella now extends far beyond the eight-hour day. Even leisure time spent on the computer threatens these close social relationships
one in five have been solicited or THE INTERNET: FRIEND OR FOE TO CHILDREN? approached by a child predator, according to the FBI. They know where they are, when, with who.
Brands use social media, games and internet in general to entice people to buy their products.
Problem : spam : Spam costs for businesses are very high (an estimated $50 billion per year) because of the computing and network resources consumed by billions of unwanted e-mail messages and the time required to deal with them. Internet service providers and individuals can combat spam by using spam filtering software to block suspicious e-mail before it enters a recipient’s e-mail inbox.
Spam is junk e-mail sent by an organization or individual to a mass audience of Internet users who have expressed no interest in the product or service being marketed
Problemes : privacy, data quality, social isolation, copyrights,
(Another main social and ethical concern about the internet is the lack of control and accountability. In fact, through certain techniques such as VPN for example, one can become nearly untraceable therefore staying anonymous. It becomes complicated to control and hold him responsible for his deeds on the internet. So in one hand there people who are permanently watched over and in the other hand, people who appear to be untouchable, this raised the problem of the right to control people’s acts. Whereas the press has been historically controlled by the Church and the government, the internet is freer as everyone can express himself freely with a small risk of being repressed. The problem is this freedom comes at a price as there are people who abuse of this ability.)
These advertisements are linked with another ethical and social issue: are they always beneficial for the consumer?
One problem that was created by the internet that didn’t exist before, is the protection of intellectual property. This problem didn’t exist when one had to protect their products by printing the copyrights. This problem
Tracking down using GPS or triangulation
Keeping track of the list of websites one has used (UK law?) implies we can determine the dangerous profile based on which websites he has visited. Solution: VPN, black web. Information society: everyone is concerned