Online Privacy Protection Challenge In the Age of Internet

by Jack C. Consultant

We live in the age of internet, the age of big data. Technology has made life in the 21st Century incredibly better in so many aspects. However, the same technology that can collect, organize and propagate information so efficiently can also be used to exploit personal info, leading to concerns about online privacy, as we hear more and more about credit card infomation leaked by websites, online banking payment password intercepted, as well as personal identity theft. Privacy protection becomes extremely vulnerable in the age we are living.

Usually the information fragment leaked is like a puzzle which needs to be combined together to make sense before your picture is revealed. This is not a problem in old days when these info are considered seperately, but, at the age of the Internet , many previously considered irrelevant information fragments become real individual privacy interests. For instance, biometric identification technology makes a normal face photo become personal privacy; Previous useless , decentralized and vast amounts of data , can now be analyzed by high-performance computers quickly to determine the vistors' characteristics such as regional information, spending habits , hobbies and so on.

So, in the Age of the Internet , our privacy concept is changing . People slowly come to accept the reality that the open sharing of the Internet environment, has no absolute privacy. There are more and more people choose to disclose privacy on the Internet , share information , and some to seek help, in order to obtain some services , some in order to win the understanding and trust of others in order to expand their influence, as we can see in those social sites.

Actually, some degree of "privacy" open, may make the network life more convenient and even in real life . Recently, Google CEO Larry Page talked about the positive effects of private information in a speech. If Google can allow anonymous users to upload and share their medical condition, medical researchers can utilize this information and may be able to save 100,000 more lives each year. It also led to a topic: How to make good use of privacy to let this double sword play a positive effect? Consensus has been reached today is to give the users the right to know, not only allows users to know whether the personal information will be retrieved and the purpose of being obtained. Users should also have the right to choose to be anonymous , refused to be taken away these private data.

In the age of internet, the task of personal privacy protection is more complex and difficult. Users have urgent need for the updates and innovations of various means of protection. For instance, in the legislative level of internet privacy, there are still many gaps , lack of appropriate top-level design . It is necessary to establish strict & sound rules in the field of personal information protection and e-commerce, designate "restricted area" for internet service providers (ISP), clearly define rights and responsibilities, and give ordinary internet users the right to konw, to decide and to safeguard.

In the field of personal privacy protection, usually technology acts more effective and faster than law-making. Along with the rapid development of internet technology, is the rapid expansion of privacy protection technologies. For example, with the development of mobile internet, the traditional " account + password + SMS verification code" authentication mode can be easily intercepted, which has been unable to meet the security needs of the user. For this case, there are technologies aimed to achieve the dual-channel transaction architecture in which payment data and authentication information are transmitted separately , and users can even generate a unique dynamic password based on their usage behavior and habits , so that hackers can not easily steal user passwords.

Armed With cutting edge technology, ordinary users now have the change of getting their privacy back to their hands. Some experienced users have learned to block their IP address to get anonymous online. More and more outstanding software provider begin to focus on personal privacy protection. IPrxoyEver team is one of them, who provides proxychain service and privacy sentinel softwares that keeps your system clean and prevents sensitive data from being retrieved by hackers or spyware. Another US company has developed a real-time alert software, if the information sent by the user may leak his or her privacy data, it displays a brief reminder message on the screen.

In my opinion, as a ordinary internet user who can not seclude ourselves absolutely from the technology, what we need to do is to seek a trade-off between privacy and convinient online life.