What is Internet Security and Why it is Important for You to Know About it?

Internet security is a key phenomenon in modern day highly interlinked world. World's top organizations invest billions of dollars annually to protect their networks from malicious users and unauthorized access from around the globe. But with the increase of privacy issues with the advancements in today's internet, everyone, rather than techies need to have a basic knowledge about the concept so that you do not end up in loosing your personal information and important assets to someone you are not very much fond of.

Internet Security

Wikipedia states as follows with reference to this concept:

Internet security is a branch of computer security specifically related to the Internet. Its objective is to establish rules and measures to use against attacks over the Internet.







Now, thinking about for a minute, you will understand the value of knowing a little bit about this phenomenon in your own general networked environment as you must would have heard about people loosing their hotmail accounts, facebook ids, twitter passwords to hackers. Why? Simply because of their lack of knowledge of taking key steps of securing their computers or devices regarding internet usage. After all internet is the grand dady of all networks - a huge network of networks. And everyone else is in the network along with you. Therefore, you need to take steps to handle issues regarding your own safety.

Read about very basic steps to how to break into a network through the following guide. You will find simple methods to hack into sessions and steal passwords (do not start impressing anyone as these tips are only of basic nature and include more information to increase your knowledge).

Internet Security and Your Own Privacy

If you are not actually interested in knowing in detail about the topic but want to know about the basic steps to tackle the problem, here is a simple set of tips:

1- Make sure you use an updated antivirus software
2- There is nothing bad about using internet security suits.
3- Try to avoid browser toolbars
4- Malware removal tool should be a must as well
5- Never leave your sessions without logging out of any service
6- Wi-fis are dangerous. Make sure you password protect your networks.

What is my definition of Internet Privacy?

Recent weeks have created huge spirals in the ocean of internet world regarding internet privacy. Everyone has been talking about the issue and the way big giants collect and store user data in the online world.

I recently stumbled upon the White House's new document regarding consumer privacy on internet and stopped upon reading that users had a right to “reasonable” limits on the personal data that companies collect and retain. I could not help myself on thinking about the unlimited possibilities originating from the word "reasonable".

My Definition of Online Privacy. Image Courtesy of ZDNet.com

For instance, it was reasonable if:
I was talking to a friend and no one was over hearing me.
I was in bed with my boyfriend and nobody was looking at me.
I was shopping and nobody was following me.
and much much more...

On the other hand, when I thought of internet, I would treat my privacy intact if and only if I was able to share the information that I wanted to disclose. Rather, than being forced to accept an agreement upon browsing any website telling me that my personal information will be collected, retained, used and never sold to improve my online experience.

It is my right to be asked before collecting any personal information from me regarding my location, interests and preferences and attempting to build my internet profile through collection of various browsing indicators originating from my source of usage. And if I do not want that information to be shared, I should be left alone. The way it genuinely happens in our everyday life. If I am not asked for that, that I consider as a breach of my privacy.

Click here to get Wikipedia's definition of Internet Privacy

Do You Expect Google to Ignore Internet Privacy in Future?

How do you feel when the Chairman of the top internet company getting billions of user hits from across the world everyday talks about future and discusses his vision of telepresence, 1 Gbps internet, world peace, communication and skips internet privacy issue while addressing trade show attended by top industry professionals and leaders?

Oops!

Does a thing like this happen intentionally or did he miss out on the topic completely without knowing that his place of address had serious concerns about Google's privacy and data collection methods?

While Google's policies were directly criticized by some of the leading speakers taking part in the trade show at Hanover, Germany, Shmidt, the Chairman of Google simply ignored others' concerns over Google products and explained his vision of future technology without taking a defensive position on Google's privacy issues being raised in EU or Germany specifically.

So my question is that do you expect Google to ignore internet privacy in the future to come? I am afraid that trends and the speed of the competition might drag the company that way. But let's hope not.

White House takes Strong Steps to Control Internet Privacy

Finally! It looks like White House is taking public concerns about internet privacy seriously and is eying towards taming down companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft and other giants to keep ordinary people safe from their covert data collection techniques and taking benefits of users' lack of choices on internet.

The new proposal put forward by Obama administration enables FTC to deal with companies and implying "direct enforcement authority" to secure data privacy and consumer information.

White House intends to have "police power" over internet companies and wants to implement an enforceable code of conduct, that these companies would have to comply with, otherwise facing litigation, or penalties, due to enhanced controls offered to FTC.


FTC, currently operates with very less authority to tackle internet privacy issue.

This proposal is informally being dubbed as "Do Not Track" measure. But according to some experts, it will still enable the advertisers to collect your personal information. However, they will not be able to use that personal information to serve you ads as they have been doing so since the mid 90s.

However, future steps will let everyone know about the success of the measures taken by White House in order to control internet privacy issues prevailing currently in the market.

We can only hope for the best and wish everyone pushing that proposal forward, luck with sincerity at the moment. But there is finally hope that our leaders have decided that its finally time that White House takes strong steps to control internet privacy right now or otherwise it will be too late to take any kind of action on that issue.

Read more about White House Steps to Control Internet Privacy at Tech Crunch

Google's New Privacy Policy. What Happens Next?

Over the last month, all of us addicted to Gmail, Google Search, Google+ had been seeing those scary messages on top of our screens regarding Google's new privacy policy.

On March 1, 2012, that new "master" policy took effect upon use of all the company's online products by the users worldwide.

Google's New Privacy Policy

Upon quick glance, it looked like the new policy was more concentrated upon getting user data and streamlining it across all the products to maximize user experience.

Primarily, as stated in the Google's official blog, the new policy emphasized upon data integration between Google search, YouTube and Docs. 

“So in the future, if you do frequent searches for Jamie Oliver, we could recommend Jamie Oliver videos when you’re looking for recipes on YouTube—or we might suggest ads for his cookbooks when you’re on other Google properties,” blog mentioned.

Which means Google will be using your searches to get you more relevant videos upon browsing YouTube in the future.

While this technique mentions one of the many possible ways Google adopts to take benefit of global searches and user preferences, it also emphasizes upon the fact that company gathers search results and stores user preferences for its own uses, thus causing a privacy issue for you.


Announcement on March 1 also stated that if users were not comfortable with information sharing, they could simply turn it off through various options. But that would only stop cross-product data sharing, not the company from getting your preferences.

Google will still be watching you!

Curiosity Alert: SEO Changes due to Google's Latest "Freshness" Update

This is really off the topic but a new trouble for some of the people maintaining their blogs and sites on periodic basis.

Not so recently, I noticed that this blog had lost its visibility in search results without me contributing much to it. I thought primarily that it was due to excessive ads displayed on the blog. So I removed all affiliate links to maintain the SEO visibility but still could not manage to improve the search rankings.

Next thing I came to know was that Google had rolled out a fresh update called "Freshness" to increase the popularity of sites that contained more fresh content. Although it did not make sense to me but it had caused enough damage to my knowledge sharing efforts.

 SEO and Freshness from Google

Tech Crunch stated as follows on the Freshness update:

"Google’s most recent algorithm update was announced last week as an extension of its previous “Caffeine” update. The so-called “freshness update,” as it’s called, aims deliver more current and relevant search results, specifically in areas where the most recent content matters. This includes things like current events, hot topics, reviews and breaking news items."

 This primarily means that niche sites that do not have much information to be updated on daily basis have lost their visibility in the Google's search rankings.

So let's hope that Google does not boost search rankings for sites churning out garbage everyday and ignore quality sites for just the matter that they are not being updated on daily basis.

Or least Google does some thing to boost Blogger.com rankings to keep bloggers motivated.

Potential of Privacy Leak due to Social Networks on a Mobile Device

Cell phones and wireless communication has evolved with light speed over the past few years. We have seen a shift of an era starting from Ericsson's giant walki talkies to Apple's iPhones. Cell phones and mobile devices today have changed from a mere communication devices used for simply calling your loved ones or communicating business deals to a medium used for sophisticated data transfer.

However, this improvement in technology have brought an immense danger of privacy leak that can potentially happen due to a smart phone.

Imagine, you are using Facebook or Twitter on your cell and your device also has GPS capabilities, which most of the devices have today. For some of you, who does not know what GPS stands for, it is a location tracking system which is called (Global Positioning System). Any GPS enabled device has the ability to send signals to another GPS device to communicate its exact location. I have already discussed the Facebook and Twitter tracking scenario in previous blog posts. What happens if Facebook or Twitter's mobile version has the ability to tap your exact location based upon your device's GPS signals? They would know where you are at a certain point of time. Won't they? Without you ever authorizing them to find you. Isn't it a privacy leak?

Social Networks and Privacy Leaks on Mobile Devices

And well, it does not only have to wait for GPS functionality. Normal data transfer over mobile social networks can even cause a user to leave traces for his/her friends so that they might know where he has been.

Social network on a mobile device has an immense potential of unintended privacy leaks for any user. Question really matters as how the privacy changed in the internet age. Or do we have to redefine the definition of privacy in the internet age?