Web Privacy: a Commercial, Social and Technological Perspective

Abstract

People all over the world are increasingly concerned about the privacy issues surrounding the personal information collected by the private organizations, governments and employers. Privacy relates to issues surrounding collection, secure transmission, storage, authorized access, usage and disclosure of personal information. This information is used for the 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 paper 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.