Question

You have been asked to give a speech at a conference relating to your own personal concerns about privacy issues in cyberspace. Your speech should focus on one (or more, if you prefer) of the following topics that relate to privacy:

• Phishing

• Identity theft

• Workplace monitoring

• Social networks and privacy

• Organizations collecting information about Web browsing behaviors (big data)

• Privacy versus national security issues

Make the speech somewhat personal, speaking in the first person, about your personal concerns and reactions to the privacy issue (or issues) that you chose to speak about. Discuss those aspects of the topic that you chose that interest you the most and explore those aspects in some depth.  

Make sure your speech includes both a good introduction to the topic and a good discussion of the ethics, privacy and security issues relating to that topic. Also, discuss possible solutions for the privacy and security issues that you discuss. Solutions might include technological solutions as well as issues in public education and public policy (legislation). Of course, you are to hand in the text for your speech.

Answer 1

With the advent of technology since the last decade there has been a tremendous potential increase in the methodologies and techniques we used to communicate. Now there are in numerous ways in which people can get connected to each other and remain in contact with the help of internet and social media. Moreover, 21st century is an era of digital data where most of our personal informations as well as other data are stored in the form of bits in the computer or the server which are hosted over the internet. We are now in the world of online internet banking system, online education system, online digital identification system and online medical consultation and information system which in fact has reduce the human efforts by accumulating the data and the services at a single point of reach within a click of mouse. This has enable human beings to take advantages of such services without compromising with the quality and do saves or huge amount of time and money as well. But as we know every good thing do also have its disadvantages associated with it. This has led us to a whole new generation of digital information where the paper work has almost reduced to negligible. The information stored in the form of digital data do also contain private data related to people which they would never want anybody else to come across. Such digital private information can be exposed two other human whom they are not intended to reach. This is called a breach of privacy. As the internet communication and technology have grown, the cyber crimes and security issues have always grown since the inception of digital data and internet.

Unreasonable intrusion into personal seclusion, public disclosure of private facts, publicity that places a person in a false light or appropriation of a person name are the prime attempt which are considered under the disclosure of privacy. Such information exposure may lead to loss of property, life as well as dignity.

The above-mentioned attempts or procedures which leads to disclosure of of private information which in turn do harm to someone life and property in one way or the other is known as breach of privacy and they are punishable according to law based on country in which the privacy breach has occurred.

Such loss of privacy and data exposure are done under the motivation of criminal intent, political intent, animosity against the other or for the intent of showing oneself to the world. The threat to privacy include a huge range of tools and techniques which breaks into you are human personal space stealing their data and using for an inappropriate purposes. Some of the examples of threat to privacy are Phishing, social network privacy issues, identity theft or security data breach compromising the national security.

First I will talk about Phishing. Is a kind of cyber attack in which people are are manipulated to unknowingly or unintendedly giving up their private information on the websites, in the messages or on the phone calls. Such private information may be used by the attacker to steal money from the bank account or to masquerade the victim on the various social media and other digital platforms and this is known as identity theft. Phishing on the phone calls are known as Vishing.

Another breach of data can take place on the social media as a result of Identity theft where by the help of social engineering or other human manipulation the attacker get the username and password for a human personal social media account and post things on the internet masquerading as a victim. This can highly effect a person by placing him in a false light. Such kind of cases have occurred in past and has been proven to be deadly for the victim.

Search threat to privacy are needed to be addressed and have been addressed in the past too but due to invention of innovative technologies in the field of hacking there is a breach of all those patches possible. It is said in the the field of cybersecurity that humans are the weakest link in the chain of privacy and securing infrastructure. Since if machines have been programmed in a way to not allow any unintended person into a private space but still humans can be manipulated and so do their mind. Therefore in addition to the technological advances to secure our are private domain and infrastructure, there is a need for humans to be trained and well informed do not be deceived by such at of hacking. There is a lot work to do in the field of cyber security in space to prevent the breach of private information to the unintended audience and they are being done on a large scale. We hope that such efforts will bring us to the world where loss and breach in privacy of personal data is reduced to negligible.