The vital need to protect privacy on the Internet
The vital need to protect privacy on the Internet
By Mila Day
JAKARTA (JP): Ever recall giving away information that could
be used to pry into your life? Maybe your wife gave birth in a
well-known hospital and the next thing you knew she received a
call from an insurance company to discuss your child's life
insurance.
Or perhaps when you subscribed to a health magazine you got
junk mail offering high-calcium milk, or various other
subscription opportunities?
Even worse still, you may have received a letter stating that
you have won thousands of Australian dollars, but in the end it
was just an invitation to gamble: send your money to a PO Box
address and you could win the lotto jackpot!
As you already know, you have become a target. You are the
captive market. No marketing spiel is ever created if it isn't
smart. Living in the digital era, you are captured in a world
where anyone could easily identify you, find out where you live
and how you lead your life.
Why should you worry about losing your privacy?
Privacy has only become a significant issue, to the majority
of people, in recent years. In this digital world any form of
data can be transferred as digital information. From your home
address, telephone number, credit card number to birthdate. From
how many phone calls you made today to what Web sites you log
into and for how many hours. It is just statistics, though. Don't
worry, it won't kill you. Well, for now at least.
Tautology of everything
There was a time when you would go to a library and manually
search the catalogs. It sometimes could take hours to find the
required book. After finding the catalog reference, you then had
to decipher what was written in the catalog -- and, of course,
what was written in the book.
Today, at your fingertips, details about any book can be sent
instantly to you. You are not wasting time looking for it, but
instead on locating the most reliable and suitable info. Browsing
the Net can be wearisome if you don't know where to start.
Sometimes you get lost in the jungle of information, or the
blasphemous acts you may encounter. Yet, you are still wasting
time.
Technically, there is an easy way, proving that the magic
performed by computers has developed more than anyone could
possibly imagine. Because all of the data is processed and stored
digitally, on the Net you can save time by using a search engine.
Type in the keyword and relevant data will appear on your
monitor.
By going to a local search engine like yahoo.com.sg you can
find out which Singaporean food stalls serve the cheapest meals.
You can also search Indonesian sites with catcha.co.id to examine
many interesting topics delivered by our fellow countrymen.
All of this is possible with the assistance of a large, high-
speed data storage server. A data storage server may or may not
be connected to other storage servers. One of the most utilized
systems today is the storage area network (SAN).
SAN is a high-speed, special-purpose network that
interconnects different types of data storage server with
associated servers, on behalf of a larger network of users. Due
to its extensive network of data servers it becomes an enormous
worldwide electronic data bank. And it is getting bigger, better
and faster every day. It is more accessible, too.
SAN contains five major elements: optic fiber cable
networking; high accessibility; remote manageability;
scalability; as well as software for network and information
management, and applications.
The fiber networking the is hub, or center's, interconnection
via fiber cabling. Since the storage is centralized, the storage
systems must be extremely reliable and highly accessible. This
includes continued operation while undergoing servicing.
Ideally, the SAN is managed through LAN (local area network)
and WAN (wide area network) ports which minimize operating
failures and create easy accessibility.
Scalability relates to the ability of accommodating the ever-
growing data residents within the network.
Finally, software must support both central or remote
management over the network. Most of the leading application
vendors, who create the application software, are supporting the
SANs. There are no industry standards for application software,
just make sure the storage subsystems and networking hardware are
compatible.
With such organized data storage systems, imagine the
potential wealth of information at your fingertips if you were
working as a data-entry clerk in a hospital that is part of a
worldwide computer network. For the heck of it, you search for
information on anyone who has an incurable disease. Scrolling
through the data in a Singapore branch you could discover that
your next-door neighbor, or your most adored actress, has been
hospitalized since last Monday with such a condition. You have
never heard or seen this before. How would you react to the
findings of your electronic eavesdropping? Would you feel sad?
Would you immediately tell someone else? Or worse still, what if
the dying person were you?
Eye of the Beholder
So what's the problem? Privacy, or something you want to keep
to yourself, must be highly respected. In commercial offices,
such as hospitals, patients' personal data is highly protected,
with access prohibited to lower-ranked personnel. In government
offices here in Indonesia, individual citizens' data are not all
stored on computer yet. But once it is stored electronically and
easily accessible, anything could happen.
It has become obvious that the Internet has changed the way
people store and access information. We must be alert to any
potential intruder, in whatever form, who could disturb our
lives. From junk mail to prank calls, to something you may not be
able to imagine, your privacy is like a time bomb waiting to
explode and shatter.
Privacy on the Internet is a major issue that can be divided
into three primary concerns: what personal information is
available to whom; whether messages or data can be transmitted
without anyone else seeing them; or if and how one can send
messages anonymously.
In order to control your personal information when
communicating with people or companies on the Net, make sure you
do not disclose all of your details. You might reveal the city
and country you are logging in from, but choose to conceal your
address and phone number.
There is no real need to conceal your date of birth, since
marketers cannot send you a birthday greeting if they don't know
your address or phone number. Think about your other details that
cannot be used to disturb your privacy, yet may be useful for the
Web site to tabulate. After all, you might be getting free
information from the site, so revealing a small amount of
information about yourself might not hurt, and could support the
site's existence.
Another privacy issue over the Net relating to data storage
concerns your personal mail, whether talk of business or even
love. This information is yours alone to keep and read. The
problem arises if your employer snoops around to see if you are
involved in fishy business that could have implications on the
company. Also, you wouldn't like others reading and making fun of
your electronic love letters.
Regarding how to send messages anonymously, comprehensive
instructions exist at www.anonymizer.com. There, you can find
this introduction: "With an Anonymous Surfing subscription, you
have total privacy online. Nobody -- from marketers to ID thieves
to your coworkers -- can see where you surf."
You can subscribe to Anonymous Web Surfing at a cost of $14.99
for three months. This service is devoted to protecting your
movements on the Net and works in partnership with anonymous
email and newsgroup access. It could blocks Cookies, Java,
JavaScript, and other tracking methods. It can also encrypt
Cookies and URL as your resources.
Last of all, you could seek the protection through a Secure
Tunneling subscription for $29.99 per three months. Stated on
their site: "It creates a virtually impregnable tunnel from your
computer to our servers." To your servers, Sir? There is no
privacy after all.