With the technological advances in new media, privacy issues have become more relevant and prevailing. Privacy issues involving the internet and mobile phones are the most threatening and controversial. With the public more conscious of their civil liberties and rights, invasions of privacy through these mediums are becoming issues of debate.
Privacy is a hotly contested issue in today’s society. This recent attention to privacy issues in the result of the information technologies into everyday life (Cate, 1997, p.1). Electronic devises are capable of large amounts of personal data in digital format, and more data is generated because of the low costs and high value of data in an information based society. As a result of this, organizations and other people know more information about you than ever before. A recent poll taken by Morgan Gallup in Australia ranked privacy second in a survey of importance, with only education ranked higher (Davies, 1997, p.147). However, many people also believe that privacy no longer exists in an age when governments and organizations have capabilities to store and retrieve personal information about individuals.
Approximately 50% of Australian adults accessed the internet in the 12 months to 2000, and 37% of households were connected to the internet (Healey 2002, p.1). The internet, because of its enhanced online interactivities, has created many issues that are involved in the privacy debate. When browsing the internet, websites often ask people for personally identifiable information. Also when browsing the internet, you are identifying information such as your interests and purchasing habits to your internet service provider. These capabilities have made the internet a hot topic in the privacy debate. Issues that are most prevailing is the collection of knowledge on websites without consent, privacy of children online, privacy in e-commerce and spam.
The National Privacy Principles, which have been extracted from the Privacy Amendment (Private Sector) Act 2000, gives government guidelines on the collection of information and its use and disclosure. The guidelines specify that organizations must not collect personal information unless that information is necessary, and must only collect personal information in a lawful way. It also has guidelines disclosing how an organization is able to use or disclose personal information about an individual. These guidelines are in place to protect an individual’s privacy while on the internet.
Many organisations have been established as a result of the growing debate about privacy online. These include The Electronic Frontier Foundation (including Electronic Frontiers Australia Inc), [http:www.epic.org Electronic Privacy Information Centre] and [http:www.privacyinternational.org Privacy International]. These groups all focus attention on emerging civil liberties issues and the protections of privacy. They also function as a watchdog on surveillance and privacy invasions by governments and corporations, which has become easier in America since the US PATRIOT Act was established, which allows greater government surveillance of emails and phonecalls.
There are many privacy threats made each time a person surfs the web. There are various ways that information about you or your activities can be collected without your knowledge or consent. These include cookies, HTTP, and browsers. Cookies are “a general mechanism which server side connections (such as CGI scripts)can use to both store and retrieve information on the client side of connection� (http://www.epic.org/privacy/internet/cookies accessed 9/9/04). Cookies can enable an internet website to record comings and goings without the knowledge or consent of a person. The HyperText transfer protocol (HTTP) is a set of rules that websites and browsers follow in order to communicate. When requesting a web page, other information, including your e-mail address and the last web page you looked at, may be sent. There have also been many reports of security bugs in browsers which have enabled hackers and websites to access personal information while on the web (http://www.privacy.gov.au/internet/internet_privacy/index.html accessed 9/9/04.)
Privacy protection is an important issue to people using e-commerce and online shopping. Online shopping and e-commerce has been a major internet growth area, with individuals now being able to buy numerous products online. The attraction of online shopping is the ease of purchase one has, with being able to shop at thousands of online stores and pay for purchases without leaving the comfort of home. However, there have been many cases of purchases going wrong, with issues from computer problems and poor customer service to being cheated by cybercrooks. Secure website abilities have been created to ensure customers have maximum security and privacy in their transactions. A secure website uses encryption technology to transfer information from the consumer’s computer to the online merchant’s computer. The encryption scrambles the information, preventing hackers from obtaining it. Only people with legitimate access privileges are able to unscramble the information (http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs23-shopping.htm accessed 9/9/04).
Another way to ensure privacy when shopping online and surfing the web is to read a companies privacy policy. A privacy policy should describe every bit of information a website gathers, explain why it is gathered, what is done with it, who has access to it and under what circumstances, and describe any control the visitor has over the process (Levine, 2002, p.17). There are also many approved programs such as TRUSTe and BBBonline that set voluntary guidelines for their members in privacy related practices.
Another issue which has come to head in the privacy debate is the privacy of children online. 90% of school age children have access to computers either at home or at school (http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs21-children.htm accessed 9/9/04). However, parents, teachers and guardians cannot prevent children from visiting websites that contain harmful or objectionable content including pornography, profanity and hate speech. Programs such as NetNanny and CyberSitter can block websites, but are still not completely effective. The Children’s Online Privacy Act (COPPA) was introduced in the USA in 2000 because of the growing internet marketing techniques that targeted children and collected personal information from them without parental notification. COPPA requires websites to gain parental consent before they collect data from children under the age of thirteen.
An area that is relevant to the privacy of adults as well as children online is chat rooms. Chat rooms and instant messaging have become enormously popular with internet users. Chat rooms enable several individuals to interact in real-time, and instant messaging is one-on-one chat which enables an individual to communicate in real time with friends and family. AOL, MSN and Yahoo all offer chat rooms that cater to specific interests, and MSN Messenger is commonly used amongst youth worldwide. Common problems that have children have reported in relation to chat rooms include profanity, being asked passwords, being asked personal information including their name, address and phone number, inappropriate advances and adults visiting children chat rooms (Consumers Union’s magazine for children, Zillions, 1996 survey in http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs21-children.htm accessed 9/9/04). The danger of being asked or leaving potentially identifiable information when using chat rooms can invade someone’s privacy by identifying who they are, their e-mail address and other personal information. This can then lead to large issues such as fraud, or the more common issue of Spam.
A privacy issue that is current in both the Internet and mobile telephones is spam. Spam is unsolicited mail (mail you have not consented to). Email spam and SMS spam, is an invasion of privacy and also can waste a lot of the user’s time. With new technologies advancing it has become quite simple to retrieve e-mail addresses and mobile telephone numbers. Through this retrieval it is possible to send a number of e-mails and SMS spam to many phone numbers and addresses. Spam is most commonly in the form of advertising, as email is becoming increasingly popular and many marketers are using it as a quick form of promoting their services and products (http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs4-junk.htm accessed 9/9/04). With the increased popularity of SMS messaging and SMS voting it has become that much easier for marketers to obtain consumers phone numbers. Entering in a competition that involves SMS messaging is entering into the world of wireless marketing. Mobile phone numbers acquired by these means will constantly be used for SMS spam. As well as SMS spam there is also many other services and technologies that affect the privacy of mobile phone users and non-mobile phone users.
The invention of wireless telephony begun with the basics of the cellular phone in the 1940s. In 1946 the first commercial mobile telephone service was established. At this time, the technology to explore in advancing the mobile telephone any further was not available. AT&T, the first mobile phone company, found that the use of mobile phones was limited as there was a limit on the transmission of wireless connections through the minimal six channels that were available at this time. In the first 60 years the phone’s technology progressed very slowly, compared to the expeditious rate of today’s progression in mobile telephony. For example, “just over 10 years ago only the wealthy had mobile phones. 7 years ago they were still rare now they are as common as home telephones.� (http://www.mobileshop.org/history/future.htm accessed 7/7/04). With the evolving technologies, the privacy of mobile phone users and others is increasingly being threatened. With new services such as SMS, WAP, internet connection, bluetooth, as well as videophones, PDAs and email, client’s privacy is fast becoming an issue of controversy and concern. As these new mobile phone technologies allow a considerable amount of private information to be stored, it is essential that this information is not available to a company or an individual. Anything from the recording of a business transaction to personal messages could be accessed and used by someone other than the owner of the mobile. Therefore, this is a major invasion of privacy that is relevant to mobile telephony.
Bluetooth is a major contender to privacy issues involved with mobile telephones. Bluetooth is a technology that allows the transfer of information between two wireless devices. Although mobile phones are the common device that can be affected by bluetooth, others include laptops and PDA’s. By its very nature, wireless communication using mobiles leaves itself open to hacking threats. Bluetooth is no exception. This technology allows individuals to gain access to another person’s information. With more detailed and personal information being stored on a mobile phones, the privacy of users is important. Although manufacturers endeavour to eliminate the chance of unauthorised access to information, this does not mean that security breaches involved with bluetooth will be completely eliminated.
The privacy of mobile phone users has always been a concern, of which mobile phone companies such as Optus, Telstra and Virgin have always been aware. These companies have strict privacy policies. With the introduction of the camera phone, the general public became concerned with mobile telephone privacy. The use of this technology has prompted much controversy and the privacy of many individuals has been invaded. This technology allows mobile users to skillfully take a photo without consent or without the individual being aware. As a result of this, mobile telephones have been banned in a number of places including gym and pool change rooms. Also, with the introduction of videophones this issue could dramatically increase in importance and significance. Once the camera phone holder has taken the photo it is entirely up to them what they do with it. In locations such as museums and art galleries this device could quite easily be used as an aid to copywriting an artists work.
When originally signing up with a telephone company, the company is provided with Personally Identifiable Information. There are no concrete laws about how a company may choose to use this information. It is often used for specific marketing and promotional work that may be sent to your home address or via SMS. It is a new development of companies that some of this confidential information will be displayed in a directory of mobile phone numbers. This development is yet to be passed due to the intense privacy issues that are involved. Although assured that without consent one’s details will not be published in the directory, many mobile phone users are not happy with this development (http://www.detnews.com/2004/technology/0408/04/etech-228881.htm accessed August 8, 2004)
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New media technologies have therefore have enabled the easy invasion of people’s privacy. The increasing popularity of the internet and mobile phones have enabled greater risk to individual’s privacy, which will only increase more with technologies improving rapidly. Although regulatory bodies and organisations are working to protect civil liberties and privacy, the interactivity of these two mediums ensures a risk to consumer privacy. As privacy is a fundamental human right, all invasions of privacy through new technologies will remain a widely debated issue in current affairs.
==See also==
===BIBLIOGRAPHY===
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Krystie Harman 18:29, 9 Sep 2004 (EST)
Alexandra Obst 18:54, 9 Sep 2004 (EST)
Krystie Harman
Alexandra Obst
