This document discusses online privacy and whether it is a myth or reality. It outlines what privacy means and how it relates to privacy on the internet and from internet sites and technologies. It describes how personal data is collected from various sources and activities. It also discusses how employers and websites monitor user activities and behaviors through technologies like cookies and tracking clickstreams. The document raises questions about how private information is used and whether privacy still exists. It proposes standards and guidelines around fair information practices to help protect privacy.

1. ONLINE PRIVACY;
MYTH OR REALITY?
Swaleh A. Ahmed

2. Privacy?
• Refers to the quality of being secluded from the presence
or view of others.
• Every person has the right to privacy, which includes the
right not to have--
a) their person, home or property searched;
b) their possessions seized;
c) information relating to their family or private affairs
unnecessarily required or revealed; or
d) the privacy of their communications infringed.
http://www.kictanet.or.ke/?p=19844

3. Internet privacy
involves the right or mandate of personal privacy
concerning the storing, repurposing, provision to third
parties, and displaying of information pertaining to oneself
via the Internet.
Internet privacy is a subset of computer privacy.

4. Privacy Questions
• Where is my data?
• How is it used?
• Who sees it?
• Is anything private anymore?
Everything about you is in at least one
computer file

5. How Did They Get My Data?
• Loans
• Charge accounts
• Orders via mail
• Magazine subscriptions
• Tax forms
• Applications for
schools, jobs, clubs
• Insurance claim
• Hospital stay
• Sending checks
• Fund-raisers
• Advertisers
• Warranties
• Military draft registration
• Court petition

6. Your Boss is Spying on You!
Monitoring software
– Screens
– E-mail
– Keystrokes per minute
– Length of breaks
– What computer files are used and for how long
Privacy groups want legislation requiring
employers to alert employees that they are
being monitored.

7. Monitoring by Web Sites
Records:
• City
• Site you just left
• Everything you do while on the site
• Hardware and software you use
• Click stream
– Series of clicks that link from site to site
– History of what the user chooses to view

8. Monitoring by Web Sites
Cookie
• Stores information about you
• Located on your hard drive
• Beneficial uses
– Viewing preferences
– Online shopping
– Secure sites retain password in cookie
• Controversial use
– Tracking surfing habits for advertisers
• Can set browser to refuse cookies or warn before
storing
• Software available to manage cookies

9. P3P
Platform for Privacy Preference Project
• Standards proposed by the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C)
– User sets privacy preferences
– Web server transmits privacy policies
– Software determines if web site meets users’
requirements
• Participation by web site is voluntary

10. We lose Privacy: Technology
• Ubiquitous communications capacity
• Walls evaporate for reading, viewing
• transactions can be observed anywhere
• Extensive processing capacity
• Inefficiency & cost protect privacy
• Aggregating and access
• Data-mining – analysis algorithms
• Communications + processing
• Transactional data collection
• Profiling
• Data mining

11. We lose Privacy: Business
• Information as competitive tool
• Customized preference formation: advertising
• Customized service/goods delivered
• Customized price/price discrimination
• Customer’s life-long consumption as primary asset of firm
• Proprietary information fends off competitive pressures

12. We lose Privacy: Politics
• U.S. & other governments highly sophisticated information
gatherers
• 1990s saw the encryption wars, US Government partially
lost
• September 11th released the leash
• Governments back into an explicit role of extensive
information collection and processing
• Including by access to market-actor collected information

13. Fair Information Practices
• Minimal standards imposed by law with a supporting
regulatory framework
• As opposed to “privacy preferences”
• EU Data protection
• OECD Guidelines

14. Fair Information Practices
• Collection Limitation
• Data Quality
• Purpose Specification
• Use Limitation
• Security Safeguards
• Openness
• Individual Participation
• Accountability

15. RFID Story
• Clothing manufacturers sew RFID into cloth.
Include garment characteristics, cloth batch etc
for recalls & quality control
• Stores, malls, etc. install readers to limit pilfering
& for inventory management
• Question
• Mall owners use the information to dynamically change the
advertisements they project on billboards in the Mall
• Police officers use the information to track the
location of cloths that match crime scene
evidence

16. Hypothetical Amazon Story
• Collects information to tailor offerings
• Provides good recommendations for books to read
• Suggests music you like
• Offers good advice when you seem to need it,
usually guesses right what you need
• How far would you go with this?
• Buying a car or furniture
• Financing/loan services
• Physician referral service

17. discussion
• How private is your online experience?

18. “The only true protection is to understand that
anything you put up there can be accessed by
somebody else.”