Ways Your Privacy Could Be Unprotected On The Internet

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There are many ways in which personal information can be inadvertently or unwittingly disclosed over the internet. Disclosure of email addresses could be used to send you junk mail. Knowledge of your password could result in someone breaking into your bank account over the web. Information of the sites you visit and the pages that you view on such sites could result in a profile being taken of you with junk mail tailored to your profile being sent to your email.

We have listed below some of the ways that personal information can be gathered on the internet. We hope that informing you of some of these ways will assist you in protecting information that you might not otherwise want to disclose:

  • When you transmit information of the internet, a third party could unlawfully intercept such information. When information is being sent unencrypted, such information is available to be intercepted.

  • When you voluntarily give personal information in response to a request by a website that you are visiting. Some sites ask you to register before allowing you to review articles or newspapers at the site even if the service is free. The website will sometimes ask for your email address, personal phone numbers and addresses. Such information is sometimes gathered by the site and then sold as part of a mailing list to those who want to send spam (junk mail) to your email.

  • Your emails are sent through mail servers which are large computers that relay messages from one mail server to another until the destination site is reached. At any mail server, the persons who maintain the server can read your email. While it is unlikely that most servers are being administered by individuals who are reading your emails, the possibility still exists.

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