ONLINE PERSONAL

PRIVACY
 Online Personal Privacy

Privacy;
«can be view as a condition or as a moral claim on others to refrain
from certain activities.»
or
«derivative notion that rests upon more basic rights such as liberty or
property.»

Warren and Brandeis;

«the right to be let alone.»

Pound and Freund;

«an extension personality or personhood.»
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Legal scholar William Prosser separated privacy cases
into four distinct but related torts:
• Intrusion: Intruding (physically or otherwise) upon
the solitude of another in a highly offensive
manner.
• Private facts: Publicizing highly offensive private
information about someone which is not of
legitimate concern to the public.
• False light: Publicizing a highly offensive and false
impression of another.
• Appropriation: Using another’s name or likeness for
some advantage without the other’s consent.
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Alan Westin;
«information control.»
Others have insisted that;
«privacy consists of a form of autonomy over personal
matters.»
William Parent;
«[p]rivacy is the condition of not having undocumented
personal knowledge about one possessed by others»
Julie Inness;
«the state of possessing control over a realm of intimate
decisions, which include decisions about intimate access,
intimate information, and intimate actions.»
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Location privacy;«yields control over access to one’s body,
capacities, and powers.»

Richard B. Parker writes:

«... privacy is control over when and by whom the various
parts of us can be sensed by others. By “sensed,” is meant
simply seen, heard, touched, smelled, or tasted. By “parts
of us,” is meant the part of our bodies, our voices, and the
products of our bodies. “Parts of us” also includes objects
very closely associated with us. By “closely associated” is
meant primarily what is spatially associated. The objects
which are “parts of us” are objects we usually keep with
us or locked up in a place accessible only to us.»
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Privacy rights can be seen as simply «a special form of
property rights.»
Thomson;
«. . . the right to privacy is itself a cluster of rights, and it is
not a distinct cluster of rights but itself intersects with . . .
the cluster of rights which owning property consists in.»
Property may come in several forms.
Intellectual property is generally characterized as «non-
physical property where owner’s rights surround control
of physical items, and this control protects rights to ideas
—for example, no matter how a specific poem is
instantiated (written, performed orally, or saved on a
website), copyright would apply.»
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A right to privacy can be understood as «a right to maintain a

certain level of control over the inner spheres of personal
information and access to one’s body, capacities, and powers.»

It is a right «to limit public access to oneself and to information

about oneself.»
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At the end of the 1990s, with the rise of the Internet and
mobile networks the salience of internet privacy become a
daily concern for users.

Federal Trade Commission (FTC) conducted a study in March

1999. It discovered that;
• 92.8 percent of web sites were gathering at least one type
of identifying information (name, e-mail address, postal
address)
• 56.8 percent were collecting at least one type of
demographic information (gender and preferences).
The monetary value of this information explains why so
many web sites gather personal information. This raises
consumers’ concern about their privacy rights.
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Internet privacy involves the right or mandate of personal
privacy concerning;
• storing,
• repurposing,
• provision to third parties,
• displaying of information pertaining to oneself via the
Internet.
Internet privacy is a subset of data privacy. Privacy concerns
have been articulated from the beginnings of large-scale
computer sharing.
Privacy can entail either Personally Identifying Information (PII)
or non-PII such as a site visitor's behavior on a website.
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PII refers to «any information that can be used to

identify an individual.»
For example;
• age and physical address alone could identify who
an individual is without explicitly disclosing their
name, as these two factors are unique enough to
identify a specific person typically.
• GPS Tracking Data used by Apps, as the daily
commute and routine information can be enough to
identify an individual.
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Internet and digital privacy are viewed differently from
traditional expectations of privacy. Internet privacy is primarily
concerned with «protecting user information.»

Law Professor Jerry Kang;

«the term privacy expresses space, decision, and information.»

Information Infrastructure Task Force (IITF) (1997);

«information privacy is "an individual's claim to control the
terms under which personal information--information
identifiable to the individual--is acquired, disclosed, and used.»
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The online privacy threats of which people are
concerned include:

• Visits to web sites will be tracked secretly.

•E-mail addresses and other personal information will
be captured and used for marketing or other purposes
without permission.
• Personal information will be sold to third parties
without permission.
• Credit card theft.
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The advances of Internet and database technology
increase information privacy concerns. Data entered
into forms or contained in existing databases, can be
combined almost effortlessly with transaction records
and records of an individual's every click of a mouse on
the Internet. Privacy concerns increase further as data
mining tools and services become more widely
available.
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2023/10/18/how-americans-view-dat
a-privacy/

https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/internet-telecoms/data-p
rotection-online-privacy/index_en.htm
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For example;
«one will be prompted to enter email address, billing
address and other information if one wants to buy a book
from Amazon.com. The information will be packaged into
a cookie and sent to the user’s hard drive, which stores it
for later user identification. The user’s browser will send
the cookie to the web server when the user goes to the
same web site. The web server can utilise the information
in the cookie to generate customised web pages according
to the interests and preferences of the user. In fact,
information about one’s movement in a web site can also
be stored in a cookie. The main concern is that all this is
done without one's knowledge.»
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By using cookies, businesses can obtain personal
information such as,
• buying habits,
• e-mail address
• the portions of web site that were looked at
previously.
This information can be combined into mailing lists for
direct marketing purposes or it can be sold to third
parties. For example;
«America Online shares information about its users
with various partners, including companies that do
direct mailing and telephone solicitations.»
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A web bug is another widely used instrument that poses a threat using
online tracking technology.
Web bugs are invisible pieces of code that can be used for several
purposes, from secretly tracking people's web travels, to pilfering
computer files.
The simplest form of web bug is a small graphic interchange format that
can work and match with cookies to send information to third parties
about a visitor's online travels
Example;

«A script-based executable bug can be installed on a user’s computer

that can take any document from the user’s computer without notice.
Another form of script-based executable bug is based on servers. They
can track visitor’s travels on the web and control the person’s computer
from its server. For example, it launches multiple browser windows
when a person tries to exit the site.»
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Example;
«Many web sites and net advertising companies place web
bugs on their pages to collect information, such as which
pages are being read most often.»

«Another privacy concern is that marketers can match their

customer databases with the databases they get from the
cookies. DoubleClick had already built up a database of
online consumers' browsing habits by using cookies.
DoubleClick not only knew where people are online, but
where they live, who they are, and their phone numbers.
This could be the most comprehensive customer database in
the world that can be used for direct marketing purposes. »
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There is a potential for fraudulent activities on the Internet, as
few regulatory standards exist.

Example;

«The security of credit card information for online purchases is

incorporated with the privacy concerns. Bibliofind, a subsidiary of
Amazon.com admitted that hackers undetected over four months
have stolen 98,000 credit card numbers. Hackers from time to
time like to publish a list of stolen credit card numbers and other
related information on the Internet. The disclosure of credit card
information without permission may lead to credit card fraud,
which is another consumer concern.»
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Mechanism for addressing privacy issues

The Internet is international and largely unregulated. This means

that the laws of any one country do not usually apply to Internet
activities originating in other countries. All countries do not
implement laws regarding Internet privacy.

1. Legislation
Legislation Privacy advocates argued legislation is needed to stop
the Internet data collection without permission.
Other proponents for legislation suggested regulating the privacy
concerns by law is better if self-regulation fails to address privacy
concerns adequately.
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2. Self-regulation

Web sites must govern themselves if they do not want the

government to get involved regarding consumers’ privacy
concerns.

Proponents of self-regulation do not want the government

regulating their activities, perhaps fearing an overly bureaucratic
system or spiralling compliance costs.
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3. Technological solutions
Some people suggested that the advance of technology could
be used as a solution for privacy protection. Some software
companies have already developed tools to tackle the privacy
concerns. Microsoft and others have released tools and
standards to give users more control over their personal
information on the web.

It is argued that technical solutions cannot solve the privacy

concerns permanently. Although the advance of technology is
able to solve the privacy concerns at the moment, it will not
work in the near future.
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4. Combination solutions

It is believed that using a combination solution is possible to

achieve privacy protection in a globally consistent manner. The
combination of legislation, selfregulation and technical solutions
may provide synergy that is more effective than a single solution.
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REFERENCES:
CHUNG, W. and PAYNTER, J. (2002). Privacy Issues on the
Internet, Proceedings of the 35th Annual Hawaii International
Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-35í02).
COHEN, J. (2008). What Privacy is for,
https://cdn.harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads
/pdfs/vol126_cohen.pdf
MEKOVEC, R. (2010). Online Privacy: Overwiev and preliminary
research, JIOS, 34 (2), pp. 195-209.
MOORE, A. (2008). Defining Privacy, Journal of Social Philosophy,
39 (3), pp. 411–428.
Privacy concerns with social networking services.
https://en.wikipedia.org/