Invasion of Privacy is a number of things. First of all, privacy is indeed a law, and one all citizens of the U.S. are entitled to.

Most of the time, invasion of privacy applies to celebrity and other public figures. Basically it represents their freedom from excessive media intrusion into their lives, and are often represented in celebrity libel cases. These often have to do with celebrities being portrayed in a negative or untrue manner, and unfortunately, often fail. The celebrities file them, but the rarely win, since it is just seen as a way of life to be stalked as a prominent public figure.

As an average citizen though, do not think these laws don’t apply to you. You have every right to privacy that these A-listers do as well. Some may think “why even bother? My privacy isn’t being invaded…” This may be true; surely you are not finding slander about John Doe on the front of People magazine, but that is not to say you are being invaded in other ways.

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Some people are unaccustomed to privacy. Many adults will speak of their idyllic hometowns where everyone knew everyone, windows had no curtains, and nobody had any secrets. They will reminisce about dialing the phone operator and asking for someone just by their first name and getting connected, Some even assert that no one used to lock their doors, and children played completely unsupervised in the streets.

In today’s society these “old-style” values are a bit antiquated, and do not apply. Today’s home environment is a large municipal district where it would be impossible to know everyone, dialing a phone operator and asking for someone by first name would garner rude laughs, and people spend top-dollar outfitting their houses with special locks and other security measures. One would be hard pressed to find children playing in the street unsupervised, for fear of the massive amount of traffic hitting them, or just being kidnapped.

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Although we enjoy things that, one-hundred years ago, people couldn’t even fathom, there are dangers that they couldn’t fathom either. Now that we have cars, people can commute to work faster and over longer distances than ever, but many people die in automobile crashes every year. Now that we have television, people can kick back and watch their favorite shows, but obesity has risen two-fold due to sedentary lifestyles. Now that we have the Internet, there is a wealth of information right at our fingertips, but there are legitimate criminals who try, and successfully do, steal identities and information every day.

For the last concern, many people turn to a popular service on the web called a proxy. There is a bit of discrepancy among proxy users and new prospects though: anonymous surfing software, or web-based proxy?

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The Electronic Privacy Information Center (from here mentioned as the appropriate epithet EPIC) is an organization dedicated to identifying emerging civil rights issues and take action on them, and protecting privacy, and let the information age tear down  the people’s Constitutional rights.

Epic.org is one of the world’s leading privacy sites, and publishes the esteemed EPIC alert every two weeks, which highlights and raises awareness about struggles for civil and privacy rights all over the globe, along with other publications similar in nature. EPIC has always been an advocator of comprehensive personal privacy safeguards.

Along with these publications, EPIC propagates their righteous message through their website. The home page is loaded with the latest news in descending order, and everything on there is pertinent; no shameless self-advertising or pushing other websites. At the top of the site is easy-to-navigate buttons that can transport you from the home page, to a biographical one, to an online store, press, etc. This makes the site very user friendly and allows even an apprentice of the Internet to get what they need. On either side of the main articles are offshoots of the site, such as a search bar, a topic system, and a whole bunch of goings-on. The search bar is very useful as the site has accumulated tons of articles, and they can all be quickly sorted by a couple keystrokes of the information you wish to obtain.

EPIC realizes that not everyone likes to visit a website to get their information, or just wishes to connect further. Being that EPIC is for the people, they connect on the people’s level. They offer links to an EPIC FaceBook, Twitter, and for those utilizing RSS feeds, they broadcast in this way.

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The internet has grown in a number of ways many people did not expect. Originally conceived as a way of communicating academic data, the internet is now home to a multitude of entertainment sites. One of the most popular is www.Hulu.com which is home to a great many classic and modern television productions. So popular is www.Hulu.com that millions of people opt to watch programming at this website on a regular basis. Now, while the first W in WWW stands for “world”, www.Hulu.com may not really available on a worldwide basis. This can prove to rather annoying to Americans that may travel to a foreign country only to discover their access to Hulu is prohibited.

Why would a benign site such as Hulu.com be barred in certain countries? Is it due to draconian censorship rules? Actually, it is really just a matter of finances. While Hulu is free to watch, it is sponsored by advertisement. That means a specified amount of money is paid for certain specific advertising exposure. Based on the terms and agreements of the advertising contract, Hulu may bar the presentation of its site in certain areas. After all, the advertiser has not paid for exposure all over the world. So, Hulu must restrict access and it does this through the banning of certain IP addresses.

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Consumers and Internet suppliers are facing off in front of legislators in Canada to debate how congested Canada’s Internet really is. The people believe that the Internet has decreased to crawl due to the ISP’s handling of Internet traffic, and their practice of trying to consolidate it all into smaller channels. The ISPs claim they are doing the best they can, but the massive amount of traffic they encounter will inevitably lead to slower browsing times if they hope to accommodate everyone who is surfing.

The Internet companies believe the solution to the speed problem is to slow down certain applications which don’t require as much bandwidth, and speed up others that require more. They urge legislators to not create any time guidelines for loading sequences, as the Internet is a rapidly evolving place and these rules and regulations would be difficult to instate in a timely manner on every new website that pops up. By giving them the control, they could eliminate the inequalities in network speeds created by the public.

Thus, the debate rages; can ISPs regulate Internet traffic? The public says no, as some people who use peer to peer file sharing programs could be hit hard by the regulation, as these types of applications require lots and lots of bandwidth. Internet providers assert that regulating these high bandwidth application is simply a choice of the lesser of two evils: most people can travel much more quickly, while some will have to wait longer to share and download files.

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OK, have you ever surfed around the Internet and when you clicked into a site you’re met with the wonderful little message that your IP address has been blocked for one reason or another? If you haven’t ever seen this then you just are not doing enough Internet surfing my friend.

You can basically become blocked from visiting and area either from the server that you are connecting through or from the website you are attempting to connect to. There are a number of reasons for either of those possibilities. Perhaps the server you are on has blocked the website due to some unsafe activity on that website or perhaps the website has noted your provider as a known site which sends out a lot of Spam or other malicious email activity.

You are in luck if the website you are trying to visit has blocked you. All you need to do is visit it with a different IP Address and all will be good because the website will not recognize you by that address. Now how you do that is the subject of many hours of web hunting. The easiest way is to access the offended website using a proxy service.

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Ever since cookies were introduced to surfers of the web, there has been two contrasting values perpetrating the Internet. One side was fully benevolent, and offered users ads tailored to their every need, and including products they might actually want, instead of the completely random bombardment of ads. All around this would create a more personalized, and just generally better surfing environment. The dark side to all of this is the tracking, and ruthless storage of information about your online life, and the possibility of all of this information to become known.

Online advertisement agencies have always had a spotted past with privacy laws and their invasion due to the behavioral advertising practices, (where they browse your history to figure out what you are interested in) and the fact that much of this is done with no permission and often without the consumer’s knowledge.

They need to change soon though, because people and lawmakers are complaining. Two subcommittees in the House are meeting this week to discuss implementing more stringent privacy laws as far as online advertising goes. The House has polled major Internet giants such as Yahoo, FaceBook, and MySpace, and found that many of them have very flawed and inadequate privacy guarantees. The people have spoken too; those polled confess they are unsure about how well they are being protected and usually completely unsure of their rights to privacy. Needless to say, the House is almost dead-set on increasing guidelines and enforcing them more strictly.

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