An Analytical Essay on Online Privacy | Study

Running head: ESSAY
An Analytical Essay on Online Privacy
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ESSAY
Introduction
Privacy is an ability of secluding various information or to express them selectively to an
authorized personnel. Privacy is linked with the state of being free from any public attention.
Internet Privacy, online privacy or digital privacy generally deals with the privacy and security
level in which the personal data of an individual is published in internet (Smit, Van Noort and
Voorveld 2014). The essay discusses the perception of digital privacy by discussing on the
issues, concerns and the measures that can be taken to protect digital privacy of an individual. In
the following paragraphs, the process in which the individual privacy can be protected are
discussed by drawing a functional judgment between the present privacy law in European Union
and in Australia.
Background- Digital Privacy in Australia/ User Profiling
Digital privacy is associated with the security of an individual’s digital information by
ensuring confidentiality of the private data that are being shared digitally. The federal Privacy
Act 1988 deals with security of a person’s privacy in Australia. The Act sets out prescriptive
rules for protection of an individual’s privacy.
Digital confidentiality is a concern as different business organizations across the globe
collects the personal information of their customers for their business benefit. For example, the
use of loyalty card concerns the privacy and confidentiality of the personal information (OAIC
2020). In this context, the concept of user profiling can be discussed. It is a procedure of
categorizing the data about a user interest domain that is used by a system to understand more
about a user and their preferences with a primary aim of improving the satisfaction of the user.
The computerized data analysis process collects users’ information with an aim of increasing

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ESSAY
users’ satisfaction however, the extent to which the private data is collected is not controlled.
The only way to protect the digital privacy in this case is to read the privacy terms and conditions
to have a clear idea of the extent to which the company is making use of the collected data to
enhance the user experience.
Loss of Online Privacy/ Comparing legislation on online privacy
The collection and use of data by different companies in name on enhancing the users’
experience or user satisfaction is a serious concern. In majority of the times, the users may not
have a clear idea of the extent to which their private data is used by the company for business
benefit. The main concerns related to digital privacy in consumer perspective involves data
collection and unauthorized use of the personal data (Sarigol, Garcia and Schweitzer 2014). The
privacy concerns are more significant in digital platforms like Google, Facebook and iCloud as
the data of the users’ browsing patterns and their interaction with the other users are collected by
this platform ti enhance the users’ experience (Bartsch and Dienlin 2016). These data are further
used for target based advertisements and therefore, appropriate measures are needed to be taken
data privacy in these platforms. All individual may not need equal level of confidentiality and
privacy as some users might need more privacy than others. Therefore, digital privacy and
internet security is a shared responsibility. The benefits that are offered by web definitely comes
at a cost, which is loss of privacy. People have become more vulnerable to data breaches and for
minimization of the risk, it is necessary to for the legislators to pass new laws for protection of
privacy as there have been an increase in technologies and products that gather new data about
their users.