Web Privacy: Issues, Legislations, and Technological Challenges

Abstract

People all over the world increasingly are concerned about the privacy issues surrounding the personal information collected by private organizations, governments and employers. Privacy relates to issues regarding collection, secure transmission, storage, authorized access, usage, and disclosure of personal information. This information is used for commercial gain by many organizations. Individual privacy concerns significantly affects consumer willingness to engage in electronic commerce over the Internet. The increased use of the Internet and Web for everyday activities is bringing new threats to personal privacy. This chapter assessed various issues related to individual privacy on the Web, growing concerns among the Web users, technologies employed for collecting and protecting information on the Web, privacy-enhancing technologies and the legal provisions to curb the Web privacy. This chapter also reported detailed discussion about Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P), its structure, present scenario of its implementation and its future success. Global consistency on Internet privacy protection is important to promote the growth of electronic commerce. To protect consumers in a globally consistent manner, legislation, self-regulation, technical solutions and combination solutions are different ways that can be implemented. © 2008, IGI Global.