Internet and confidentiality

It’s an age-old topic, as old as the Internet itself. Heck, the topic has been talked about and debated numerous times that the quote "beating on a dead horse" isn’t even near enough to describe how tiresome the topic has become. What topic am I referring to? Internet privacy.

Unlike Internet security, which can usually be solved by installing a couple of legitimate anti-virus programs and putting a few restrictions in one’s user profile to avert unwanted programs from installing or running in your system, Internet privacy is a different beast altogether. What people don’t realize is that any personal info that gets leaked out on the Net is info that they themselves made freely available. Don’t believe me? Just use Google or Yahoo and do a search of your own name; you’d be surprised to see how much information comes out. Now realize that anyone can use any search engine and find out stuff about you that you’d normally don’t want the public to know. Information on the Internet can be so easily exploited and to this day, people are oblivious about this and continue to post very personal information about themselves on publicly viewed websites.

Typical of this is information people are putting on their profiles in social networking sites like Friendster and MySpace. There is such a thing as putting in too much information and the people who fall victim to their own whims are mostly teenagers and young adults. I’m sure the Friendster-using young lady did herself and her friends no favor when she uploaded a bunch of photos of their barkada’s beach outings, although I would imagine potential male "friends" and stalkers are having a field day with it. That same girl probably even has her home address and mobile phone number readily viewable on her profile page. It sounds funny but there are some people who do put too much information on their profiles or whatnot. Yes, you can opt to secure your profile on these various websites, but are you willing to take that chance? Any diligent parent should be checking into their kid’s Friendster profile (or whatever social networking site their kids are into) and make sure that information being uploaded won’t negatively affect their kids.

However careful a person may be, it is still possible to find one’s information readily available for public consumption on the World Wide Web. A well-meaning friend might be using an online address book or he may have signed you for some online service, like birthday reminders, thinking that you might like it. If this friend was unfortunately enough to sign up for a Web service like that with security that can be easily compromised, then you’re both tough out of luck. Basically, it just takes one person or company to just let any pertinent info slip out.

As dire as the situation may seem, there is a way to counter this, but it does involve a lot of patience and time. Patience in educating every friend and family member about Internet privacy, time in researching and knowing the ins and outs of the Internet culture to know which service would be the next big haven for personal information and the subsequent leaks that would happen. There is software that can help you safeguard your personal info on the Internet, but proper education and good ol’ common sense are still the foremost weapons to safeguard confidentiality and privacy on the World Wide Web.

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Howard Paw is the vice president of the IT department of Yapster e-Travel.