The United States have always been wary of terrorism and other threats to our national security. Other countries seem to despise us, whether it be for differences in religion or ethics, difference in cultures, or simply a strong envy of our opulence. While America has always been very conscious of our security, the 911 attacks showed us that our defenses were not infallible, and there is always a chance for disaster to strike. This woke us up so to speak, and in today’s day and age, security for our nation is top priority of the government.

You have seen the changes all around you, and they were often blatant. The medium that allowed the attacks, air travel, has been most affected by that fateful day. Many people remember before the attacks when they could go and meet their loved ones in the terminal to greet them, while now they must wait outside. Many people remember zipping through the security lines, while now you are in there forever being searched and prodded. Everyone has heard the news of the airports possibly putting in full body scanners to scan passengers even more thoroughly, and to avoid even more accidents from filtering through.

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The Internet has firmly taken root in America and now is involved and vital in every aspect of life. For the first time ever, there is a medium at which organizations can build a career base and reach their clientele at minimum cost. People can connect over chatting, whether it be text or actually web cam directed, and interact and have fun online. People’s social lives now exist predominately on the Internet, though MySpace, FaceBook, Twitter, etc. The Internet isn’t all good however, and this is easily recognizable. It is safe to say though the biggest wound it has inflicted is the one on people’s individual privacy.

People post to much stuff on the Internet, and it never deletes itself. Although sites rarely ever clean out their servers, even if they did, you can guarantee your information is already posted to another site. And you can be sure from there that somebody stored it on their computer and emailed it to a bunch of their friends and co-workers; a vicious cycle. Suddenly your embarrassing photo or online rant about something has made you the laughing stock of your community and future employers will hold this over your head. Employers now often do a quick Google search of their applicant’s names, to see if they have a social networking site account. Colleges do this also; they want to make sure they are hiring some complete slacker who has all sorts of incriminating stuff on his page.

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No, not the sugary sweet ones. These cookies are much less succulent, and can sometimes be dangerous, and not just for your diet plan. These online cookies are just little pieces of data that a website puts on your computer when you log on. Inside the cookies are strands of information that record various things that you did on the Internet, like what parts of the site you went on, how long you stayed there, and other things about your browsing habits. This information is supposed to be helpful and for the most part it is. It serves to tell the website that it is you signing on, and though this they can bring you back to the parts of the site you liked, or even automatically load all of your user preferences that you had stored. This allowed for a more stream-lined browsing of the site, and also it allows for a site to be loaded faster.

As was mentioned before though, cookies can also be dangerous. Instead of the helpful cookies mentioned above, you can possibly have malicious cookies. These are cookies installed on your computer either by a hacker or a bad website. Through this, they can hack into your folders and steal your passwords, or simply try and track you back to your real-life location. Even worse, these cookies could contain viruses that are planted directly on to your hard drive, and your virus scanner might not even recognize it. These can either be installed to try and steal identifying data about you, or simply with malicious intent to crash your system.

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People are getting on to these social networking sites more and more as more people join. Maybe it is a just a “jump on the band wagon” type of thing, but never the less, these sites grow exponentially every day. As the sites grow, and people continuously ignore privacy settings and other safety precautions on these high risk sites, more and more personal and sensitive information is posted to the World Wide Web. This information can be used for just knowledge purposes, but it can also be used maliciously.

These issues are highly unpublicized and for the most part, only privacy advocates are concerned with the matters. Most people are blissfully unaware of the privacy risk their social networking web page presents to them and everyone they involve on it. Some people are going to try and teach the youth (and truly everyone) how to properly protect themselves on the Internet and these sites.

Enter the developer called Six to Start. Partnered with a local news station they are developing a game designed to teach kids about privacy, without the “teaching” aspect seeming so austere. The game is called “Smokescreen” and kids will be able to use their privacy as a defense system; the more things and information you put out there, the less your defense will be. The game rewards them also for not completely shutting off their release of information. Sensible things to put on your blog page, like name and interests, and maybe just COUNTRY of location.

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Do you remember the days when you would get random advertisements on your computer that had absolutely nothing to do with what you like? Those days are long. The Internet took a page out of television’s book. First, they began to place appropriate ads on appropriate sites, just like T.V. Consider a sports channel; likely there will be many ads about football and baseball tickets, and little about the new Cabbage Patch kids doll. The Internet then became the same way. On a guitar chat website, one would see guitar cables, amplifiers, and guitars rather than miracle-grow garden solution. They have stepped it up once again, but this time not everyone is happy.

Enter behavioral advertising. This new form of ads actually investigates your browsing history and other documents on your computer to form a keyword profile of what you like and are interested in, and then brings ads to you based on those investigations, and this is all involuntary. Privacy advocates are having fits over this, and the public are scared that their sensitive information will be compromised, and it won’t have even been their faults.

“Is it worth it” is their slogan, and they say that it isn’t worth having someone’s entire computer scanned just for more ads to be thrown at them. It also is involuntary, often an entire ISP (Internet Service Provider) signs up all of their customers for a portion of what the advertisers make. It is all about the money. That’s what these advertisers think; these tailor made ads will lure people into spending their hard earned money.

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The city of Los Angeles has proposed a multi-million dollar buyout of all sorts of Internet information: e-mail, personal information, even police records. They propose to use Google to find all of this information; essentially tap Google’s unlimited database. Although the city wishes to buy everything for noble reasons like criminal tracking and other crime deterrents, the public worries for its loss of privacy.

Paul Weber, who spearheads the Los Angeles Police Protective League, says that he himself is worried. He says that his unit has little knowledge on what the plan fully entails, and they are quite worried about what the repercussions on the public’s privacy will be. He is especially worried about the release of confidential police records and other criminal data.

He was right, and not the only one worried. The online messaging giant Twitter sent out a message to be careful when using Google, because they frequently use “cloud computing”: storing files online rather than in their direct control. This allows the data to be much easier to hack and get into. Twitter isn’t the only one to have this concern though, but it a novel event that one huge company calls out another.

This shift from keeping data and information online is useful, as it cleans up the massive amount of space needed to store all of this data, but it represents many security issues. For one, the whole thing would be accessed by a username and password system, so if a hacker got either, he could be on his way into a gold mine of information. This is also amplified by the fact that many people link their accounts together, so if a hacker gained access to one account, he could actually be getting into many accounts. Also, there are not as many layers of security that prevent an interloper from gaining access.

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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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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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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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When you send emails or go browsing on the web, there is more going on than just visiting sites or sending out messages.  First, your Internet communications are full of information such as headers.  Deep packet inspection is a process that captures and reads through your internet activities and collects details about the formatting, as well as reads the actual emails or web site you visit.  In other words, deep packet inspection software can gather the information used by your computer without your knowledge or permission.

Your communications can contain financial information, log-ins, personal details and other information that makes it possible for your identity to be compromised by criminals and your accounts to be assessed.  This is a major problem.

According to several periodicals, such as CIO magazine, the use of DPI or Deep Packet Inspection is being reviewed by Congress, and possibly will be rendered illegal.  Although no one is champing at the bit to claim they are using this technology, your employer, your ISP and criminals all have the necessary tools to use this method to inspect your Internet activity.

Although they mean well, Congress is notoriously slow on passing legislation, and you don’t have time to wait for their findings.  Waiting could have devastating results.  But there is an immediate solution available, and that is to use an anonymous proxy for all your internet activity.  It will encrypt your communications and that can defeat or delay any deep packet inspection activity.

This is one of those situations where depending on others to protect you is not the best approach.  Digital thieves are everywhere.  Protect yourself and use an anonymous internet proxy.  Privacy is not a given on the internet.  It’s usually what’s taken.

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