The Internet is a place in which it is imperative to remain anonymous at all times while working or just relaxing. When surfing online, you are side-by-side with many people you have never met before. Many of them are just there to do their business and leave, but some are there for other reasons. Where there is money, there are criminals. These criminals realize being online and doing theft is much easier and less risky than doing so in real-life and running the risk of being caught red-handed.

While this data should never be handed over willingly, this just recently happened. A cheerleader at a school in Mississippi was demanded to hand over her FaceBook information to her cheer-leading coach. The cheer-leading coach heard about this girl making a fuss about some internal politics of the team, and figured the information would have been conversed about on FaceBook. She was right; the girl surrendered her information and the coach found the conversation and alerted the rest of the school faculty. The girl was quickly reprimanded for her actions.

This seems wrong, and it is. The girl was forced to give up her personal information for her FaceBook account and then her account was hacked during school hours and on school property, then she was punished for her speech. This is unconstitutional, but unfortunately happens often on the Internet.

Although the Internet has many uses these days, the most popular use of it has to be for online shopping. It seems that Ebay may have started the craze, but these online vendors have blown up since its advent. Amazon, Craigslist; they all are successful sites and are probably the most highly populated sites on the Internet today.

Although these places say they are all about the customer, one cannot sometimes always be fooled so. Many of these companies are coming out of the woodwork and coming into scandals regarding the privacy of their loyal consumer’s data.

When you sign up for these stores services and go to buy something, you are prompted to enter all sorts of data. At the time, it all seems to be for the good of expedited shipping, and other company related things. Even a credit card number is required, so that the seller may have access to his or her money.

Everybody is familiar with the stories of people getting swindled by false companies, or being tricked by an unreliable seller. This is not a big concern on the big selling sites, but there is another thing that is. They sell your private information to third party companies who then in turn try to sell you even more things.

You may have heard privacy sites use the term “cloud computing” and speak of it as a privacy issue. If you aren’t privy to the vernacular of Internet users, cloud computing refers to storing information virtually on the Internet, instead of on private, physical servers. There are a couple of tangible advantages to this; for one, you don’t have to take up such a massive amount of space for huge computer servers. Then, it is cheaper. The Internet has unlimited storage space, and is often very cheap or free to put all of your information there. Lastly, it isn’t the company’s responsibility to store, look after, and keep safe the information of its clientele. While this all sounds good, you know the old saying: there’s two sides to every coin.

This universal adoption of cloud computing among many different companies represents a serious privacy concern. First of all, these companies are no longer the ones protecting the information. When the data is stored on their own physical, private computer network, it would be significantly harder for a hacker to break in and steal all sorts of sensitive information. These things almost never happened.

We live in an age of many concerns and fears. Children aren’t allowed to play outside anymore as they were ten years ago for fear of being stolen by some interloper patrolling the neighborhood. People are now given intensive scans at the airport for everything from knives, to drugs, to guns. Even your loved ones waiting to greet you are not allowed to come up to the terminals anymore, instead having to wait outside in the crowded lobbies and baggage claims. The Internet has also changed. Once there was only a few sites to go on, and nobody knew a thing about spy ware or malware. People sent e-mails and went on sites in a totally blissful and carefree manner, but that soon changed.

With the advent of the “Information Generation”, people flocked to the Internet for its unlimited resources and its great exploring potential. People began to have virtual lives online, living vicariously through games or social networking sites. The Internet unknowingly conglomerated with television through YouTube, and is currently putting television on its last legs. Even the drudging commute to work is becoming archaic, and being replaced by the coffee-fueled masses that earn their bread working from home.

America has always been a land of change, as well as freedom. Right now, we are in the middle of another Industrial Revolution; although perhaps it will appear in history textbooks as the Technology Revolution. As the people evolved and changed their habits, so did the inventive criminals. Crime has always been a plaguing leech on America’s side, but one that is inevitable by the amount of freedom each citizen enjoys. Although criminals are often stereotypically portrayed as completely ignorant, uneducated low lives, they know quite some about their art; it is their chosen profession. They follow people and find out where they are most unprotected and will strike there when the opportunity arises. They also factor in how likely it is that they will be caught.

When everyone began using the Internet, criminals began to see that this was an excellent new avenue for them to exploit. Instead of having to rob someone in a suspicious back alley or on a crowded subway train, they could do so surreptitiously online, without even a trace of fear. A robber mugging someone in an alley will be plagued by the screams of his victim, and most likely caught by police as he tries to escape. An Internet hacker who hacks into an innocent person’s bank account online will not have to worry about the victim screaming for help, nor about a quick escape. It is likely the victim won’t even know that they have been robbed until months later, and by then the criminals will be gone, without a shred of evidence left behind.

This day and age isn’t called the “Information Generation” for no reason. Nearly every worker does all of their work online and over the computer, and the number of people working from home on the computer has grown to number that could never even be comprehended ten years ago. It has even trickled down to kids. What kid doesn’t have a computer in the house or own one personally. Many schools have begun to do classes and class work online as well. Everything is going digital, but there are problems as well.

The Internet is a great way to just have fun exploring. Doing a Google search about something you are interested in is a great way to pass the time and become more educated. The Internet is also very distracting. Anyone can contest to the devil vs. angel they feel every day while at work; they want to work, but the Internet is so alluring. Some can compromise, and just use it on specific, time allotted breaks, but others will spend all day on YouTube or fantasy football and get absolutely nothing done, and probably an angry call from the boss later for lack of productivity. For this reason, many employers and schools limit and censor the Internet. A hired worker is one thing, but a student in a boring class they hate will have no problem blocking out the droning teacher and wasting an hour away.

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.

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?

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.

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.

“Renesys”, a company that analyzes and studies network connections and their locations have reported that the creation of proxy servers around the world and their use by Iranians has been slowing down lately. The government is catching on; the use of these proxies and their advertising is so public that the government has no problem blocking their citizens from using them. Although the government is finally becoming aware of these proxies, it truly is a global effort to produce them and allow their users anonymous and secure browsing.

Almost two thousand proxies have been created and shared by users all around the globe. Old proxies are being found by the Iranian government and blocked, and by identifying key characteristics of proxies, they are able to identify and shut down new ones just as quickly. This active oppression of its citizens blocks their political struggle and any other injustices from the rest of the world. This just shows how important it is for people in free countries to create proxies for the less fortunate to use.

Renesys explains how proxies function: They are a piece of software you install or a website you visit. Either one protects your identity and allows you uncensored Internet access. The website or computer you are going to acts as a middle-man in the website to computer exchange. The website or software changes your IP address, which acts as a nametag for your computer, to something different, and therefore, stops you from being tracked. When you go through a proxy server, the proxy goes and gets the website you requested, and brings it you. The proxy doesn’t know anyone is behind the scenes pulling the strings either. In fact, if someone were to access your browsing history, all they would see is the name of the proxy site over and over again.