Analytical Essay on Online Privacy

19
Analytical Essay on
Online Privacy

Analytical Essay in Online Privacy
Online Privacy
Privacy refers to the ability and right to share the information with the selective audience.
Information privacy is one of the essential requirements in the present digital era. Digital
privacy refers to the combination of the three categories as information, communication, and
individual privacy. The protection of the privacy across all of these areas shall be ensured to
make sure that the information sets, user identity, and the communication mechanism utilized
is also safeguarded against the privacy risks and attacks. Digital Privacy is now being
included in the legislations that are developed by the countries across the globe. The same is
true for Australia as well. Digital Privacy in Australia is protected as per the Privacy Act,
1988. There are thirteen privacy principles that are defined in this act to make sure that the
privacy of the information and data sets is protected and ensured at all times (Hughes,
Dawson & Brookes, 2015). These privacy principles apply to a lot many information
categories, such as healthcare data, financial information, demographic details, political
views and opinions, marketing data, and a lot more. However, there are no direct rights
defined to sue a person or an organization in the case of violation of these rights. There are
rights to complain that have been defined by the Australian government.
There are various issues of concern that are present around the privacy of the digital
materials. There are several privacy risks and attacks that may occur. These may be in the
form of unauthorized breaching of the information pieces, unauthorized monitoring of the
communication activities and networking, attacks on the availability of the information
through flooding of the networking channels, malware attacks, and various others. With the
popularity of the social media platforms, there are abundant data sets that are now available
on these channels. There are concerns that have emerged due to the same. The business firms
and organizations can easily acquire the information from the social media channels of their
customers and competitors (Kim, 2016). The data may then be used for analytics and
marketing of their products or services. There are ethical concerns around these operations as
the consent from the data owners may not be taken.
There are varied options that shall be considered for maintaining the digital privacy. The
information privacy shall be maintained by the application of a combination of security &
privacy tools and techniques. There are technical and logical privacy controls, such as anti-
malware tools, anti-denial tools, network monitoring tools, etc. that have been developed.
The implementation of these tools shall be done to ensure the privacy of the information sets.

Analytical Essay in Online Privacy
The new age technologies, such as Blockchain technology shall be used to protect the
financial data and information during the transactions. The communication and individual
privacy shall also be ensured by obtaining consent from the information owners at all times.
The physical security of the individuals shall be guaranteed while usage of the digital
applications. For example, the attacker shall not be able to access the location details of a user
as it may possess privacy and physical risks to the individual.
There are several web channels and social media platforms that have become an essential
component of the present scenario. The platforms, such as Facebook, Google, and iCloud are
being used by the users all across the globe. The business firms are also using these platforms
for the purpose of customer interactions, marketing, analytics, data storage, and a lot more.
There are measures that shall be taken to protect the users and their information on these
platforms (Thakur & Singh, 2016). The first and the foremost are the user awareness and
training on the security and privacy protection. The users need to be told about the best
practices that they may follow. They shall be told about the information sets that they shall
share on such public platforms and the information that they shall never put across. Also, the
choice between the secure and unsecure networks shall be told to the users so that they may
be able to distinguish between the two. The authentication and access control measures are
the next set of steps that shall be taken. The use of One Time Passwords shall be done for
providing access to these platforms. The combination of different authentication modes can
also be done so that only the authorized users success in gaining the access. It is also
necessary that the use of encryption is actively done in order to protect the information
pieces. The combination of all of these measures will ensure the maintenance of privacy.
The individual privacy on the digital platforms shall remain the same for all the user types
irrespective of their location or participation on the digital platforms. The information privacy
can vary on the basis of the information categories. For example, there are some of the
critical data sets, such as healthcare information or financial data that must never be exposed
to the unauthorized entities. This is because the compromise of security and privacy of these
data sets can result in the legal obligations and it may have an extremely negative impact on
the users and the organization involved (Alqahtani, Lu & Lu, 2015). There are some other
information categories, such as product catalogue of an e-commerce company, press releases
published by the business firms, etc. that are shared by the business firms as per their will.
These require lesser privacy controls. Therefore, the privacy varies as per the information
type and category.