The Benefits of Technology
The development and growth of technology are considered to be the best thing to ever happen in the global world, due to the many benefits it brought to its users. Through technology, people can communicate with one another regardless of where they are around the globe. Technology also made it easy for people to transact various businesses online rather than holding face-to-face meetings. It is also through the technology that people can obtain fundamental information online through the Google or other browsing sites which have a wide and rich variety of information. On the other hand, it is believed that everything which is beneficial to human has also its weaknesses, and technology was not an exception.
The Challenge of Cyber-Insecurity
The primary challenge facing the technology is increased cases of cyber- insecurity. Some individuals have taken advantage of the technology to commit cyber-crimes (Mathew et al. 2010). For example, there have increased cases of hacking especially in financial companies. The hackers have been using the technology to access the financial or other organizational confidential information by hacking into their systems. This has created a significant threat to all users because it is evident that one's confidential information is no longer confidential or safe.
Securing Websites and Logging Out Sessions
It is for this reason where all people using technology based gadgets are urged to remain vigilant by securing their websites, and continuous log out any sessions in their systems to ensure no one can easily access the information, especially the passwords. The security breach is causing a lot of stir because data privacy is affected. Both individuals and organizations have their confidential and private data which should never be accessed by any other party, but with the increased cases of cyber-crimes, it is evident that no data is secure, hence need to adopt various strategies to curb the vice (Mathew et al. 2010). One of the fundamental cyber-crimes which are affecting the data privacy is the online tracking.
Online Tracking
Basing on a conventional life example, when an individual is driving or walking on the streets and notices that some people are trolling or following him at a distance, the person will eventually feel insecure because he doesn’t understand the reason as to why he is being followed. No one can follow another without a proper purpose, and one of the reason may be to steal from him, kill him, or understand his private life, such as where he lives, who he interacts with, what he prefers to eat among other private issues. Therefore, by this person being closely followed and monitored, his right to privacy will be infringed. The online tracking can be related to the above scenario, where individual want to trace all your secret and confidential information (Englehardt et al. 2016). Therefore the online tracking will affect the digital privacy of an individual's confidential and private data.
Ways used to track data online and the possible solutions
Third Party Cookies
One of the means the online trackers use to trace individual’s digital information is through the first and third party cookies (Mayer et al. 2012). Cookies are defined as bits of text which is primarily placed on the mobile phones or computers browsers by certain websites. This information placed is based on the individual browsing activities. It is for this cookies that when one had put the computer or the mobile phone off, when they return to the same browser, and search the same website visited before, the site will easily read the text placed there and recognize the information about the individual, for example, the username and password (Caudill et al. 2000).
Therefore, the individual will access the site without signing again as previously done. This will be beneficial to an individual especially those who have forgotten their passwords, and they need to access the website because the cookies will allow you to remain logged into the site until the time one log outs deliberately. Although the cookies are considered to be essential, the existence of third-party cookies is posing a threat to the digital data privacy. The third-party cookies are the cookies which are placed in the computer or mobile device's browser by ad-servicing companies (Mayer et al. 2012). For example, when browsing over various websites, there are multiple ads which appear, and when one clicks the ads, they are saved on the website. These ads sometimes aren't secured, and therefore these cookies can be used to track one's surfing from that point forward.
With these third-party cookies posing a threat, it is essential to control the settings of the browser by blocking any third-party cookies. It is also important to continually clear all available cookies after every browsing activity to ensure no cookie is saved or placed on the browser (Mayer et al. 2012).
Finger-Printing
Apart from using the cookies and especially the third-party cookies, online trackers can track an individual online through the use of fingerprinting. This technique tracks an individual digital data without using the cookies of the browser. Since each computer’s or mobile’s device browser is unique, the fingerprinting identifies the device by using characteristics of the device browser configuration to track the digital data and browsing activities (Chen et al. 2004). Since the trackers use unique browser configuration, deleting the cookies will not prevent the online tracking. There are various ways in which the trackers can use the fingerprinting to track one’s browsing activities.
For example, in the year 2016, Princeton University carried out a research which established that various companies which need to trace a specific person's browsing activities could send an audio signal to the user's browser when one open a particular web page, and the audio sent can be used as a fingerprint. This happens through AudioContext which is a JavaScript. Based on the study, it was established that the trackers could also use the battery of the device to monitor the browsing activities (Chen et al. 2004). For example, various advertisers can use a battery status API which is primarily embedded in HTML5, the code in which much of the internet is designed. Such codes are used to let the sites know the level of the battery power.
In addition, various sites such as Facebook and Google can be used to track online digital data for the users using their search engine or the site. Although they do not monitor and track this information for the wrong purpose, the users see it as an infringement of their rights to privacy. This is because the things one does online are confidential, and no one should gain access to the information regardless of who they are. Therefore, any attempt by the third parties or search engines to monitor and track the user’s information whether positively or negatively is inappropriate because each individual requires privacy in their communication, online transactions and any other critical and confidential digital information (Agarwal et al. 2013). The cases of online tracking can be categorized as the acts of eavesdropping and sniffing which contravene the rights to digital information or data privacy.
Ways to avoid being tracked
Considering the effect of been tacked, where the user lacks privacy to all what they do through their browsing activities, it is important to find which will help in avoiding being tracked. One of the following ways to avoid being tracked is to ensure all the third party cookies which can be used to track the information in the browser are blocked or stooped (Goldfarb et al. 2011). It is also essential to ensure the browser history is not maintained but always clear the history over time. For example, it is critical to delete all the HTTP cookies at the end of each browsing session. Also, it is essential at the end of each browsing session to delete all the single Flash LSO and also embrace the utilization of a proxy server which will help in masking the users IP address and posing it as an anonymization service. This makes it hard for the trackers to access the IP address or any other configuration settings for the browsers (Goldfarb et al. 2011).
In addition, different sites track or monitors the users browsing activities. Therefore, to ensure they do not recognize when one visits the site for them to start monitoring, it is crucial to install an add-on "Referral control" http:\/\/goo.gl\/G8vkC for chrome and http:\/\/goo.gl\/gdx8X for Firefox. These will ensure that the sites which one visits will not receive the notification of the browsing activities on the site. Also, using the Ad-block Plus, which is available in Chrome, (https:\/\/adblockplus.org\/en\/chrome), which will help in blocking various ads which can be used by the third parties to monitor or track users digital information (Chen et al. 2004). Other users can prefer using VPN which is essential in hiding the user’s device IP address and poses it as an anonymization service. Lastly, it is vital for the users only to access the sites which they consider safe. Some of the sites are unsafe, and therefore sharing any information will amount to hacking, eavesdropping or sniffing of the vital information which should always remain confidential and private. For this reason, the user should always check the websites privacy policy and various commentaries about the website before filing any registration form or sharing critical and personal information.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, we can conclude that not all tracking is negative. For example, although cookies can be used to track or monitor users' information and online activities, they remain a fundamental and critical part of web browsing. But it is also important to note that some of these cookies lead to online tracking, thus posing a threat to personal data integrity and privacy. This is because, when another party monitors one's information, it doesn’t remain secret or confidential anymore. Therefore, although cookies are paramount and of significant importance, they also pose a threat, hence leading to negative effects on the users. Consequently, it is the responsibility of each user to ensure their data is secure and avoid being monitored or tracked. There are various measures such as using a VPN to hide the IP addresses, clearing all the cookies, as well as blocking any third-party cookies, among others. This will help in protecting the confidentiality and integrity of the digital data by embracing privacy.
Works Cited
Agarwal, Lalit, et al. "Do not embarrass: re-examining user concerns for online tracking and advertising." Proceedings of the Ninth Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security. ACM, 2013.
Caudill, Eve M., and Patrick E. Murphy. "Consumer online privacy: Legal and ethical issues." Journal of Public Policy " Marketing 19.1 (2000): 7-19.
Chen, Kuanchin, and Alan I. Rea Jr. "Protecting personal information online: A survey of user privacy concerns and control techniques." Journal of Computer Information Systems44.4 (2004): 85-92.
Englehardt, Steven, and Arvind Narayanan. "Online tracking: A 1-million-site measurement and analysis." Proceedings of the 2016 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security. ACM, 2016.
Goldfarb, Avi, and Catherine E. Tucker. "Privacy regulation and online advertising." Management Science 57.1 (2011): 57-71.
Mathew, Alex Roney, Aayad Al-Hajj, and Khalil Al Ruqeishi. "Cyber crimes: Threats and protection." Networking and Information Technology (ICNIT), 2010 International Conference on. IEEE, 2010.
Mayer, Jonathan R., and John C. Mitchell. "Third-party web tracking: Policy and technology." Security and Privacy (SP), 2012 IEEE Symposium on. IEEE, 2012.
