Week 3 EOC: internet privacy vs. market research

In today’s digital age, the internet is our friend but is it. The company’s of today use the internet to make market research in the hopes that the research will bring to them fruit of profit. This is done in the ways of cookie’s, these are small bits of info attached to a web site that are bounced back to the the company's  in a article published in netWorker: The Craft of Network Computing Vol. 2, No. 3 (June/July 1998), Pages 13-18. The definitive version can be found at http://www.acm.org/pubs/citations/journals/networker/1998-2-3/p13-cranor/. It was said, (Why is so much of the recent attention to privacy issues focused on Internet privacy when consumers have had privacy concerns long before they started doing business online? Certainly, the current hype surrounding the Internet in general has contributed to the buzz. These days, anything that happens online seems much more exciting than things going on in the "real" world. But in the case of online privacy, I think there is some substance behind the hype. ) internet privacy is a real issue and in today’s age with it is not knowing what it is that is out there and who it is that is looking at it there is a massive real issue as to what they will do and are able to do (Fortunately, there are laws to protect you when you’re online. And legitimate online advertisers are concerned with protecting your data—you should be, too. http://www.iab.net/privacymatters/3.php) there are a few steps that can be done to protect you in this manner

• 1. Safeguard your computer: Use a firewall so only trusted servers can access your computer. Install anti-virus and anti-spyware software - and keep it updated.
• Read privacy policies: Before sharing personal information, read a site’s privacy policy. Does it guarantee to safeguard your data and not sell or share it? If the site has no policy, be wary.
• Never reply to spammers: Millions of spammers fire off their unwanted spam messages without knowing if the email addresses are real. When you respond, you indicate there's a real person attached to your address, prompting a potential spam flood.

There are many more but these steps are some of the most simple ones that can start the ball rolling and keep you internet healthy.