Posted 07 April 2012 - 05:47 PM
People have their information stolen on the Internet and that constitutes a loss of privacy too. Some people are careful enough to not put up anything publicly accessible on the Internet. However, they should be careful enough to protect their authentication credentials for any private information about themselves that is stored on the Internet too. For example, consider the case of a typical user with a GMail account containing messages from his or her bank containing a bank account number, and a password recovery email for online banking. A scammer can create a page that looks almost identical to the GMail login page and can collect the username and password of the unsuspecting user. To cover the tracks further, the scammer can even get the user's web browser to redirect to the actual GMail website after having collected the username and password, further making it difficult for the user to tell that his or her information has been stolen until it is too late. The user does find out much later after the bank account has missing funds and it is traced much much later after the incident has occurred and the bank refuses any responsibility over the incident because it was reported to the bank by the user long after the incident occurred.
Banking information only affects a user financially (though there is the emotional effect that results from the financial loss), but when confidential emails and photographs reach somebody who decides to misuse the information, much more can be lost.
People have to be careful with the way they handle personal information about themselves. When they access private information on the Internet, they have to make sure that the website they are entering their authentication credentials onto is actually the website that they think it is - a look at the URL in the address bar of the web browser will reveal if it really is the actual website. Using the HTTPS protocol for login rather than the HTTP protocol is another means of ensuring that the information being sent cannot be stolen easily. The authentication information is typically encrypted by most large websites such as GMail, Yahoo! Mail, eBay, Paypal, and other such websites. Some websites that do not use HTTPS encryption should be avoided when accessing information from a public or wireless network.
Another means of ensuring that you are entering the information on a trusted website is to use a two-factor or out-of-band authentication. Yahoo! Mail enables you to create a privacy seal such that when you do attempt to log in, an image of your choosing appears to indicate that the web page you are accessing does actually come from Yahoo!, though there is no guarantee that the web page has not been altered in any way. It does provide some degree of protection. Often, banking websites provide you with a password as well as a device that changes a time-sensitive pass code to enter when you have to be authenticated. Other websites would probably send you an SMS message with a confirmation code to ensure that you are the one who has initiated a particular transaction. It provides an additional layer of security because a scammer trying to use your account has to know more than just your password to gain access to your account and misuse your information.
Passwords and other means of accessing private information should be changed frequently or at regular intervals. Passwords should not be easily guessable, such as using one's own first name or date of birth. Passwords should ideally consist of alphabets, numbers, and even some symbols. Passwords should not be written down, but if they are, they should be stored in a safe place and not in proximity to the computer.
Photographs posted on the Internet often remain for a long long time. Perhaps a presidential candidate a few decades in the future would have his or her photographs as a kid accessible on the Internet, along with photographs of his or her room. Something as simple as a picture taken in a messy room can be detrimental to one's career because it can convey the message that one is disorganized and erratic in his or her work behavior. Employers today often request employees for their social media passwords, which FaceBook has stated is a violation of its policies, but that does not stop employers from gaining access to information posted online by either getting employees' passwords or getting them to provide access to an application that gathers information from their accounts. The FaceBook API comes with an agreement that employers would be in violation of if they store the information collected from employees' FaceBook profile accounts, however it is hard for FaceBook to tell when the information has been copied so it is up to the users to act as the guardians of the information and ensure that the information they have posted to social media websites does not fall into the wrong hands.
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