Assign 5 privacy yea right

There are a lot of major problems with protecting personal privacy on the internet. There are many major risks. One of these risks is what is known as cookies. Cookies are only a risk when used the wrong way. Cookies contain information about what’s been on your computer and can be accessed through techniques known to hackers. Another risk is that by using an ISP (internet service provider) all of the information that you send on the internet can be observed. ISP’s do not collect all information because it would be illegal, but they do collect some information passed through there system in order to be able to provide the internet connection. ISP’s also provide law enforcement information if requested. I think this is even a privacy violation by our government because they should not be able to access all your information without warrant. There are also many other risk with internet privacy.

There are many reasons for concern as well. If personal privacy can be violated easily on the web it puts people in danger for a number of reasons. People can access your personal information about where you live, your social security number, credit card, and bank information. With just these few pieces of information you can be robbed of all your money. You can have your credit cards maxed out and your credit destroyed. If your address is accessed by someone with a grudge you could be assaulted or even killed depending on how crazy people want to get. To me privacy in connection with the web is personal information that if made public could result in some sort of harm to you. Privacy violation can harm you physically, financially, or emotionally such as in the case of harassment. Wikipedia defines internet privacy as consisting of privacy over the media of the internet or the ability to control what information one reveals about oneself over the Internet, and to control who can access that information.

I do many online transactions and privacy used to always be an issue on my mind. I buy school books, cloths, shoes, I even bough a motorcycle online so I have had a few online transactions. I used to pay the company direct which you give your account number and then send it over the net to the business. Turns out this can be very risky depending on who you are dealing with. I ordered a part for a motorcycle online about 2 or 3 years ago. I thins I found the product through EBay, but it linked you to the company website where you could pay for items. The item I was trying to buy was a new set of flush blinkers for the back of the bike. They where like 100 dollars plus shipping. The parts where in Europe, but I ordered them, and didn’t think anything of it. A couple of days later I get a call from my credit card company asking if I was making some sort of heft (like 2000) purchase out of the country. I told them no so the transaction was denied, and turned out there was a couple more charges on the card that the card company protected me against. How exactly whoever had my card number got it I do not know, but I learned not to do business out of country with unfamiliar sources on this one, and I also became skeptical of transactions over the web. I did not pursue anything on this because I did not really lose any money per say, so I am not sure what the solution could have been. What I did resolve to was using a banking purchase option that is supposed to protect personally information. It is called bank pay (BOA) at my bank, I do not know the ins and outs of it, but instead of the money that you spend coming directly out of your account, it comes from the bank, which is suppose to protect your banking information. I have been using this system for about a year and have not had any problems.

They sell a million products now days for internet security and safety, but do they really work? The way that I see it as long as technology continues to advance so will the advancements in technologies to intrude on people’s privacy. For this reason I think that transacting business or just being someone on the web will always lead to at least some sort of a privacy threat.

Sources:

Internet privacy. Retrieved 9/27/2007 from Clearinghouse
Website: http://www.privacyrights.org/


Internet Privacy. (2007). Retrieved September 27, 2007 from Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Website: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Cite&page=Internet_privacy&id=159183503

Internet Privacy Risk. Retrieved September 27, 2007 from Revolution software protection. Website: http://www.proxyway.com/www/internet-privacy.html

Gift Economy assign #4

When considering gift economies there are many different examples that can be looked at. Gift economies exist not only in cyber space, but also in the physical world. According to wikipedia a gift economy is an economic system in which goods and services are given without any explicit agreement for immediate or future repayment. In the physical realm one gift economy that I participate in is religious tithing. Religious tithing can be considered a gift economy because you are in a sense giving money with no immediate expectation of a return. With this example you are hoping for a long term return of not going to hell, but it is not guaranteed. This concept of giving without expectation for return is why many places on the internet can be considered gift economies.

There are many gift economies on the net that could be discussed in this situation. One gift economy that I am familiar with is DC++. For anyone who does not know what this is it is a file sharing system where you can get music, movies, software and other downloads from other peoples computers. I consider DC++ an example of a gift economy because you do not have to repay anyone for the free downloads that are available to you. What you do have to do is make a certain amount of downloads available from your computer to other users on DC++. The way that this system is set up you receive the gifts of free downloads from people you probably do not know and will never know, but at the same time you are giving the “gifts” to other people that you do not know just by being on this file sharing network. In this example the motivator for giving the gift, or letting others download your files, is that you are then capable of downloading files from a large base of users.

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s nineteenth-century essay ‘Gifts’, outlines as follows "The gift, to be true, must be the flowing of the giver unto me, correspondent to my flowing unto him." DC++ abides by this definition as a gift economy because it is a big network of gift givers and receivers. Although the gift giving and receiving is indirect because we aren’t necessarily giving downloads back to the same person we downloaded something from, there is a constant flow of giving happening. There are many other examples of gift economies that can be found on the web.

Another type of gift economy that I am thankful for are websites like wikipedia or Google. They are a type of gift economy because they are giving free information. If you are interested in learning about something you can go to one of these sites and acquire the information that you need. I consider these gift economies because without them I would have to buy encyclopedias, or seek out experts in whatever it is that I am trying to learn. Instead I can access the information free and easy by simply going online. There are a few different types of gifts when it comes to a gift economy. These forms of giving are considered content gifts, which are gifts that have the capacity to satisfy more than one person and in many cases, information gains rather than loses value through sharing. How does information gain value you might be asking, it can simply be more valuable to one person than to another at any given time. According to “The Economics of Online Cooperation” there are many different types of motivators for givers. In the case of the websites mentioned above I think the motivator might be loyalty. These websites give information that people request with the expectation that the next time they are looking for something on the web they will return to their site. I consider online gift economies to be very helpful in times when information is needed, regardless of the topic.

References

- Kollock, P. (1999). The Economies of Online Cooperation: Gifts and Public Goods in Cyberspace. London: Routledge
- Retrieved September 21, 2007, from Wikipedia: Gift Economy.
Website: http://en.wikipedia.org/Gift_economy
- Retrieved September 21, 2007, from FirstMonday.org
Website: www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_12/veale/