CyberLaw & the use of cookies Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

CyberLaw & the use of cookies - Essay Example Many of the e-commerce sites directly ask users for personal information such as name, date of birth, e-mail address, credit card details etc, through forms which the users need to fill up online. However, in addition to such information, many sites also record data about their users browsing habits. This data can be matched with personal and demographic information to create a profile of user preferences. This information collected by theses sites might be used to target advertising or offer customized services. Or, sites might engage in web lining, where different users are offered different prices based on their profiles (Lin, N.D). Unauthorized access to personal information on the Internet remains relatively easy in the absence of encryption technology. Encryption is the process of obscuring data to make it unreadable without special knowledge or technology. Encryption is the method used to protect communications for centuries. But only organizations and individuals with an extraordinary need for privacy had made use of the technology for example: Government establishment, Banks etc. Now a days encryption technology is used in protecting widely-used systems, such as Internet e-commerce, mobile telephone networks and bank ATM. Encryption can be used to ensure secrecy, but other techniques are still needed to make communications secure, particularly to verify the integrity and authenticity of a message (Wikipedia, 2006). Whether or not the exposure of privacy on the Internet is overstated, it is undisputed that there are security risks associated with its use. It is safer to assume, for the present, that the Internet is not yet a secure medium over which to communicate financial and personal information without having due consideration of the risks and legal issues involved. Apart from traditional privacy concerns like surveillance and unauthorized access to information, the