Privacy

PRIVACY
Internet Privacy allows users to disclose personal information under the assuring that their information will remain secure. In regards to New Media, Privacy is hard to maintain when the essence is to share and collaborate. Most sites ask their users to agree with a privacy statement and this provides the user's assures, but upon reading the verbiage of the statement, the user would find out that the privacy statement actually allows the site to use any information provided to them in any manner they see fit. This is a valuable revenue source for sites as they can sell such information to advertisers. It is good decorum to watch what information is shared on the Internet and to read the site's privacy statement in regards to how they will handle the provided information.

Type of Threats
There are many types of threats in the internet such as Virus, Email Spoofing, Electronic Spam, Phishing, Overseas Money Transfer Scam, and Trojan Horse Programs. Virus is a harmful malware that copies itself to attach itself into user’s computer data. Its intention is to create an exploit to steal space from people’s computer and takes up CPU time making computer run slowly. Virus can be passed on to other people when a file containing virus are sent to another person. Trojan is a type of Virus that doesn’t replicate itself and doesn’t spread as viruses. Email Spoofing is a way people forged email to appear as it was sent by a reliable person.

Privacy and Advertising
With advertisers able to use new media to gather more data about consumers, there is a struggle to find a balance between what is collecting too much data on consumers where it is an invasion of their privacy and what is needed to learn more about them to make more effective advertising. People generally don't like advertisements, so if advertisers are able to present more relevant ads than consumers may not feel as inconvenienced as if they were seeing ads that did not apply to them.

Software Attacks
There are three types of different software attacks cybercriminals use to attack web users. (1)Remote attacks needing user action, (2) Remote attacks needing no user action, and (3) Attacks by programmers developing a system. Cybercriminals use these methods to access your system and gain access to your information. Many times these attacks are profit driven and sensitive information can be sold on the black market for large sums of money.

(1) Remote attacks needing user action

Virus - Computer codes that perform malicious actions by attaching to another computer program.

Worm - Segment of computer codes that perform malicious actions and will replicate itself, or spread without requiring other computer programs.

Phising Attacks - Uses deception in the form of official looking emails and instant messages to acquire sensitive personal information.

(2) Remote attacks need no user action

Denial of Service Attack - The attacker sends immense amounts of service requests to the user in order to crash their system and therefore rendering it useless

Distributed Denial of service Attack - Similar to denial of service attacks, except the initial systems that the attacker become bots for the attacker to attack more systems.

(3) Attacks by programmers developing a system

Trojan Horse - Software programs that hide in other programs and are activated to reveal their designs

Back Door - A password that typically only the attacker knows that grants him access to the entire system of the attacked. This allows the attacker to bypass all security measures.

Privacy and Social Media
When is comes to new media, in particular to social media, many users raise their concerns over the privacy and confidentiality of data and personal information being shared and uploaded. Many believe that certain social networking websites also sell their users information to certain marketing companies to make extra profits. On the other hand, there have been instances when people lost their jobs just because of something they uploaded or commented about on Facebook via their profile. So are we safe on these social networking websites and do we have any privacy as individuals. To make sure that your information is private, I will recommend everyone to go to their profile setting and disable anything which allows the website to share your information. We think that we only know what we are doing on these sites, but in reality it is opposite.