Online Privacy and Security Issues: Threats and Solutions

Online Privacy and Security Issues
Introduction
In today’s world, everything is becoming digitalized. For example, education and businesses are
now conducted online. It is not a wonder to find people buying and selling goods and services
via the internet. The need to use the internet for business or e-commerce has come from the
demand within companies and governments to make better use of computing technology, to
improve customer interaction, and also the exchange of information between customers and
sellers, or between sellers and sellers (Chuleeporn, 2010).
Conducting business via the internet has been referred to as e-commerce or electronic commerce.
According to “Privacy will hit tipping point in 2016” (Taylor, 2015), “it endeavors to improve
the execution of business transactions over various networks.” E-commerce has made business
easier and enjoyable which has resulted in more performance, better quality, higher customer
satisfaction, and better decision making among the consumers and sellers. In recent years,
especially in the twenty-first century, the increasing number of internet users and rapid growth of
networks and technologies, such as laptops and internet-enabled phones, has made e-commerce
to be viewed as one of the killer applications of the computer and communication technologies;
in other words, the best way to reach to a significant number of customers and many people is
online through social media sites such as Facebook among others (Cowhey & Aronson, 2017).
Common Privacy and Security Issues
The ever-increasing use of the internet has resulted in many consumers giving too much
information without even realizing it and has been viewed as a tempting treasure, especially for
marketers (Engel, 2013). For example, when a consumer visits a particular company’s website,

he might unwillingly provide to the company with even confidential information. Computerized
interactions between businesses and their clients have helped in building more sophisticated
companies. As more information is being shared with others, some clients’ personal information
ends up in the wrong hands and might be used in incorrect ways bringing up problems between
consumers and businesses (Taylor, 2015).
The nature of online activities has been seen to threaten the privacy of consumer’s and the
businesses taking place online. Every move the consumer or a business owner makes on the
internet, whether on smartphones, tablets, or laptops, turn out to be information that trackers
have been able to access, and used to their advantage. The following are some of the issues or
threats that the consumers and businesses are facing when it comes to privacy and security online
(Hoffman, 2015):
Proliferation of cookies
Very often, marketers can be heard saying that they keep their consumer’s database very private
by only viewing it in urgent situations, but some fail to keep it secret. It has been discovered that
the amount of information that a cookie can collect about a particular person can enable the
marketer to acquire a lot of information concerning that person. The proliferation of cookies is
increasing at a very high rate (In Moore, 2016). Additionally, the spread of cookies shows that a
consumer and a business owner, has very slim chances of conducting a decent business
transaction via the internet or online, without a third party interrupting; therefore, the internet is
no longer secure.

Online data collection which has led to location data betrayal
Location data enables one to be tracked on every move he makes across the world. For example,
when one leaves his or her house to go to a friend’s house, or even goes running an errand, and
the geolocation is tracked and recorded, it gives a lot of information about the person. This
information serves advertisers to their advantage since through it; they can send promotions to
businesses, even when the customer is unwilling, or had not signed for it. (Lewis, 2011)
Control of personal information
The issue of controlling consumer information has now dominated the nature of online business
relationships. The interactivity between the consumer and e-business has become a
communicative tag of war, as consumers strive to have more control over personal information,
while businesses attempt to gather more and more information on the consumers. According to
Reynolds, Woods, and Baker, virtually all web users have declined to give personal information
to websites at some point, and for those who have provided their data, half of it is usually
falsified (Loosen, 2011).
Information and identity theft
Identity theft is a growing issue, especially when it comes to the interaction between business
owners and their clients or consumers which can be correlated to a violation of privacy and
security on the side of the consumers. Consumers are not well aware of what happens with the
personal information they usually provide during business transactions at times (Peter &
Valkenburg, 2011). Researchers have found out that in some instances, the consumers’ personal
information has been used to conduct identity theft; this has been as a result of the free flow and
proliferation of information.