George Simmel, a sociologist, mentioned that a person is not inhibited by shame while connecting with strangers because you never expect to see them again. By the same analogy, the internet offers relative obscurity as long as your true identity is not being linked to online databases. Unfortunately, this precise information can be bought, subpoenaed or hacked by vested or malicious users.
Does internet privacy matter? The answer to this vexed question is rather convoluted and can easily be pulled out of context, but to address this core issue, we need to understand it thoroughly. Privacy ensures our right to free speech and autonomy, especially where people wish to express their opinion in oppressive regimes.
It?s the same feeling of violation when something said in confidence is echoed to unintended individuals. It?s also embarrassing if your medical condition is revealed to strangers or your financial difficulties and intimate details are made public. It is also possible that you may be denied medical insurance or charged heavier premiums because your search for a particular disease is tied to your profile. We maintain a certain decorum while in public; why should this be different when we are on the internet? Maintaining privacy and locking up personally identifiable information on the internet is equivalent to keeping your doors bolted at night to keep out unwanted elements. It should also be noted that anything posted online is permanent and may affect users in the long run in case anything detrimental is proven while applying for jobs or in routine background checks.
Google?s recent privacy policy changes and bypassing browser rules to place tracking cookies needs to be understood in the context of the foregoing discussion. First, a brief history. It all started with DoubleClick?s acquisition of Abacus Direct in the 1990s, an off-line compilation of buying habits from mail catalogs and retailers in US. It?s mojo was that it effectively linked mail-order profiles with actual credentials of real users. Google bought DoubleClick subsequently and spawned it?s ?ad-words?, the non-intrusive text advertisements that has made billions for it.
Since every connected device on the network has an IP address, it can be linked to an individual user account(s)and based on geo-location, gives Google unprecedented access to individual profiles and a filter bubble; it can cross-link searches to your profile and effectively block ?objectionable content? that your government finds offensive.
Google is also unlikely to delete the rich haul of its data and logs, taken from millions using its email service (which is scanned for specific keywords), ?personalised search? with data from Google Plus, your fetishes on YouTube, every URL you have clicked or searched using the Chrome browser, each activated Android handset and tracking cookie circumventing safeguards in various browsers like Safari and Internet Explorer; generating a unique ID profile and uploaded to Google?s servers. This is important for the company because it seeks to lock users into its giant advertising ecosystem, just like Facebook or Twitter. Google, under its unified privacy policy, has failed to effectively communicate to its users as to how this would impact and potentially harm its users.
Unknown to most, Google is under heavy scrutiny about its modified privacy policy and the subject of private anti-trust investigations by the Federal Trade Commission in the US.
Benjamin Franklin rightly said: ?They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty nor security.? Is privacy online just an illusion anyway? What this means is that there is no control over your personal profile information and, instead, this is being used by nameless and faceless corporations for their own profit. Millions would want to share information with their trusted contacts; the likes of Facebook and Google make it possible. However, this comes at a huge personal cost. It boils down to an individual decision to stay off these networks and use better alternatives.
This is not limited to Google?Bing uses data streams from Facebook, Microsoft tracks every installation of it?s Office software, profiling cookies and super-cookies (related to Flash Local Shared Objects). Sophisticated device fingerprinting, metadata from various pictures users post online, data logging by various applications in smart phones, ISP tracking user data and various web bugs are other avenues that leak user information and individual contacts.
What can you do to avoid such user tracking, then? It?s difficult, if not downright impossible. As a basic precaution, use open source operating systems like Linux (there are many distributions available to ease your transition from closed source applications like Apple Mac and Windows). Mozilla?s Firefox browser is strongly recommended and make sure you delete the cookies after each browser session (accessible from browser options) or use the private mode while browsing. Use Duckduckgo and Ixquick as your primary search engines and other specialised options, such as supporting the use of natural language query processing. There are many tutorials on the internet designed to teach you how to safeguard your privacy using Tor and other using-anonymous services.
Finally, I strongly concur with Bruce Schneier when he emphatically said, ?Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power.? As governments seek to obtain profile information by any means possible, this warning truly rings a bell.
The author is a research scientist at the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Research, Chandigarh. Views are personal