Privacy Under Attack!

According to Forrester Research figures, there are now 93 million

Internet-enabled computers and 407 million Internet users. It is expected that

by 2010, there would be 30 billion Internet-connected devices, including 663

million cars and 1.5 billion phones! (Source: IEEE Internet Computing)

It´s not difficult to imagine how important Internet-connected computers

would be in the near future. However, a computer connected to the Internet acts

as a double-edged sword. It can give you tremendous communication power and

place the largest collection of information in the world at your service. It can

also be a source of many problems in personal and professional life.

Targeting Internet users



Till now I had conveniently believed that hackers would be interested only

in big fish. Why would a hacker try to get into my computer system and steal

information? All that he would find in my system is some notes on marketing

strategies, some artworks for advertisements and brochures, content for my

clients´ web sites and of course the soft copies of the Channel Tech columns! I

am a negligible entity in this sea of 93 million Internet-enabled computers.

However, something recently happened to me that made me think again. When I

said that I am a negligible entity in the sea of 93 million computers, I

overlooked one important thing.

The same logic that made me look negligible makes me look very attractive.

Not to a hacker but to a marketing professional.

He thinks I am one of the 93 million strong group of potential customers for

a product that he is marketing.

I had reviewed the new trend of paid listings on search engines earlier in

these columns. This trend is picking up fast and there are many advertisers who

are taking advantage of this. In addition, paid pop-up advertisements on search

engines are also becoming popular.

How vulnerable are we?



While I was searching for some networking utilities on Google one day, a

pop-up advertisement came up in a new browser window. The advertisement

announced a new software product for protecting your online privacy.

As usual I closed the window, and to my surprise, another window opened, a

continuation of the earlier advertisement. It again talked about PC privacy, but

this time it gave me evidence of how online privacy can no longer be taken for

granted. It showed me the list of folders on my C drive!

The code that got downloaded into my browser when the advertisement window

opened was able to read the names of folders from my hard disk. Unbelievable?

Yes, even I wouldn´t like to believe this. Maybe I had fallen asleep for

sometime while working late and it was just a bad dream?

This is no bad dream at all. All this is possible and smart marketing

professionals would soon start building up profiles of Internet surfers and

target them with suitable products of their interests, which become very evident

from their surfing habits.

By using this IP address a code can enable the software

running on the server to pick up some information from your system–provided

some other necessary conditions are favorable for doing this.

Junk mail trauma



Techniques of extracting e-mail addresses from web pages have also become

very powerful. These web crawler applications run 24 hours a day and seven days

a week to extract millions of e-mail addresses. When they are able to build a

surfer´s profile and identify him with an e-mail ID, it will spell disaster for

the individual user.

Even now, millions of blind e-mail shots are flying

constantly in cyberspace. That is how you get so much of junk mail in your

mailbox. Advertising "profilers" can track your movements in

cyberspace and collect data on your shopping habits. All sorts of information

about you may be out on the Internet, ready for someone to use for his next

marketing campaign.

Another way of collecting information about you is a cookie.

A cookie is a small piece of information the site wants to store on your hard

drive. Sites can easily track what you do during one visit, but it gets more

complex when you go away and come back later. That’s where cookies prove very

useful.

Cookies allow sites to keep track of who you are even if you

haven’t visited that site for sometime. Most cookies simply make surfing more

convenient. However, when sites allow a different company, usually an

advertising service, to place its cookie on your computer from within their own

code and then use that cookie to track you from site to site, they can build a

profile of your surfing habits and use it to put targeted ads in front of you

when you are surfing.

Ensuring privacy



To protect yourself from the invasion of privacy, you can take a few

protective measures. Most involve a trade-off between convenience and privacy.

One way to keep away the profilers is to hide your browsing

habits from them. For this, some anonymous surfing service can be used. Dial-up

connection to your ISP assigns you a different IP address each time anyway.

Your next choice is to get wise about cookies. Current

versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Communicator have security

features that keep sites from obtaining your e-mail address or accessing your

files without your permission, and every browser offers you the ability to turn

off cookies. Turning off cookies is a good idea but not very practical. Because,

some e-commerce sites require cookies to keep track of what’s in your shopping

cart. If you turn cookies off, most browsers will beep at you repeatedly,

warning you that the site is trying to send a cookie and asking you to accept or

reject the cookie.

Another solution to get rid of aggressive advertisers is to

use utilities, which block not only cookies but also advertisements.

With these shareware utilities running, you see a box with a

plain text link in place of banner ads.

They can also block Java applets, Java-Scripts, and plug-ins,

which can create security problems. Of course, these are compromises and in

exchange for increased privacy, they bring in a reduction in convenience

features.

So happy browsing! And God save you from intruders.

Ashok Dongre