ERIC
SPELLMANN
Privacy in an Online World
A while back, I wrote about online privacy. A lot has changed since then, so
let’s get up to speed. First, more and more privacy complaints are stacking
up in the US at the FTC (Federal Trade Commission – http://www.ftc.gov).
In case you didn’t know, the FTC is the agency in charge of overseeing
the privacy rights of US citizens on the Internet.
Anyway, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC – http://www.epic.org)
filed suit a while back against the FTC claiming that they (FTC) are not doing
enough to answer that stack of complaints. We’ll see how that turns out.
How much do people actually KNOW about your online travels? The answer is
simple: only as much as you tell them. Many companies will offer you low-price
or even free services and products in exchange for your personal information.
Is it a worthwhile trade? Depends.
Before I give ANY online company information about myself, I check out their “privacy
policy”. Any reputable company that asks for personal information will
have one. It should be very specific about the use of your information. Will
they sell it to third parties or use it only internally? If they use it internally,
HOW will they use it?
This point becomes very important when accessing information on various websites. Some
sites will give you free access to their information, but only after you tell
them a little something about yourself. Read their privacy policy first.
I’m not saying that you should NEVER give out your personal information. In
most cases, these companies will only aggregate the information to better determine
their target customers. In other words, the trade-off is worth it. Just
be careful.
But what about your day-to-day surfing? Can a website know who you are when
you visit them? Sort of. Every computer on the internet must have a unique
ID called an IP address. “IP” is short for “Internet Protocol”.
The address is a series of four three-digit numbers, such as 134.056.002.253.
Your ISP has large blocks of these IP numbers assigned to them by their provider.
Chances are, your ISP does not have enough of these numbers to assign an IP address
to every customer, so an IP pool of addresses is created. Whenever a person
logs onto an ISP, their computer is assigned one of these pooled IP addresses
on a first-come-first-served basis. Your IP address changes every time you
access the Net. Not only does this give you more privacy, it makes it harder
for criminal hackers to target your machine. We call this strategy, “dynamic
address allocation”.
When you visit any web page, you leave a footprint, called a “hit”.
A hit actually consists of the following information:
- IP
address of the visitor
- Date
of the visit
- Time
of the visit
- Operating
System used by the visitor
- Browser
used by the visitor
Please
note that your e-mail address is not included in that list. Reputable
ISPs do not track where their customers go on the Net. A customer’s
privacy is paramount to the surfing experience. ISPs only
track when users log in, log out, and the IP address they were
assigned. If presented with a court order, an ISP can produce
a report tying an IP address to a particular user based on those
time-stamps.
But what about cookies? There's a lot of confusion about these little items,
so let's clear it up. Many newspapers have internet versions. In fact,
on some sites, you can read the entire newspaper for free every day. However,
most want something in return: your information. After you fill out some
basic demographics, you choose a user name and password to get into the site.
Now, if you go there everyday, you might get tired of typing in that username
and password every time. Most have a little box on the screen saying "save
password". If you check that box, it will save your username and password
in a file on your computer called a cookie.
Next time you visit their site, their system will check that cookie and use
that information so you don't have to enter it again. You go straight
to the Front Page without lifting a finger. In other words, a “cookie” only
stores information about you on your system and it is only accessible by the
server that placed it there. Cookies are for convenience and do not represent
a privacy concern.
Online privacy concerns aren’t new. In fact, your privacy is being
attacked on many fronts than just the internet. Market researchers, competition
entry forms, cold calling on the phone - we need to be careful in all these
areas.
(Editor's note: Also watch out for online forms - fields that *must* be filled
in are normally marked with an asterisk. You may decide you have no interest
in giving them more information than is strictly necessary).
I’ll see you in Cyberspace!
http://www.EricSpellmann.com
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