Nowadays, we live in a world surrounded by technology.  With an increase in personal computers, more and more people are gaining access to the Internet.  As there are crimes on the streets on New York, there are also crimes on the Internet.  Some people steal information from computers; while others, try to gain access to a Web site or server.  Sometimes the crimes can be far worse.  That is why everyone should be concerned about security and privacy on the Internet.  Everyone should be aware that it is very easy to get information about anybody on the Internet.  Some Web sites are even made to prove that violation of privacy on the Internet is not just a theory, it is real.  On Privacy.net, there is a link that will analyze your connection.  This site proves to the users that it is easy for other people to find out information about them, especially they're Internet Protocol (IP) address.

It is easy for web sites to find out your IP address.  Every computer connected to the web has they're own personal IP address, it is similar to a telephone number.  When visiting a web site, the two computers (yours and the site's) must exchange IP address in order to have a communication link.  Sometimes, your IP address can be sent to a third party, one which has a banner ad.  Usually, the site has a log file to record your computer's IP address.  Permanent Internet connections usually have fixed numbers.  This number is a 32 bit number broken into four 8 bit octets.  Each octet can range from 0 to 255.  So your IP address would look something like:  255.0.100.200.  For more information about IP address, follow this link:  IP addresses, it should easily help clear things up.

Once someone has found out your IP address, they can easily find out what they want to know about you.  They just need to know how.  "To trace the address from the log file (this can also be done with the addresses in the headers of junk e-mail) use Internet tools such as the Domain Name server lookup command or 'NSLookup' command:

nslookup 205.177.128.2:

Name: russ-smith.idsonline.com
Address: 205.177.128.2

If e-mail is accepted at this server then russ-smith@idsonline.com is usually the e-mail address. This worked in this case. Often, with corporate users, the machine name is similar to an employees name so rsmith.company name.com could result in capturing their e-mail address. Sometimes a company directory is posted online making it possible to get that person's work e-mail, phone, and/or address (Consumer.net)."

Along with the trading of IP address, many organizations also use "cookies'' to track your every move on their site.  A cookie is a unique identifier that a web server places on your computer.  It is a serial number for you personally, which can be used to retrieve your records from their databases.  It's usually a string of random looking letters long enough to be unique.  They are kept in a file called cookies or cookies.txt or MagicCookie in your browser directory/folder.  They are also known as "persistent cookies'' because they may last for years.

If you look at your cookies file you may see the names of web sites that you have never heard of.  They were probably put there by companies that resell advertising space from a large number of popular sites.  Those ad placement companies maintain huge databases recording details of who looks at which pages.  The larger ones have cookies in place on millions of peoples' browsers.  If you use one of the popular search engines, the queries you type are probably being logged and analyzed too.  We wonder whether some companies are selling your identity as part of the package.  This possibility means that once your identity becomes known to a single company listed in your cookies file, any of the others might know who you are every time you visit their sites.

The result is that a web site about gardening that you never told your name could sell not only your name to mail-order companies, but also the fact that you spent a lot of time one Saturday night last June reading about how to fertilize roses.  More disturbing scenarios along the same lines could be imagined.

There are of course many convenient and legitimate uses for cookies, as Netscape explains.  They also allow "mass customization'' of the content on web sites.  But it's not generally possible to tell from looking at a cookie alone how it will be used.  Knowing that cookies are misused, it is recommend to disable cookies unless you really need them.

There are now sites that are being set up to allow you to surf the web anonymously.  "Anonymizer Pipeline will protect your Internet activity with strong SSLeay 128-bit encryption between you and our network.  It will allow you to use e-mail, news, and the web anonymously and securely from your personal computer.  Your connection provider, and anyone on the network between you and the Anonymizer subnetwork, will see only scrambled data. All your activity will appear to come from the Anonymizer subnetwork in California (http://www.anonymizer.com/3.0/why.shtml)."

For more information on how not to lose your privacy on the internet, view this video tutorial.

Other great links to help you find out more about the privacy issues over the Internet: