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Comments on Privacy Issues
Internet privacy, like security, is a complex topic that affects every individual that uses the internet. Privacy is also a nebulous concept that is difficult to quantify or frame in absolute terms. There are many different views about what exactly constitutes 'good' privacy or a breach thereof. And even when agreement is reached on key principles, individual requirements and tolerance levels vary widely. A level of privacy that may be quite comfortable for one person may be completely untenable for someone else. In the absence of clear, concrete, widely-accepted standards, confusion and misunderstanding abounds.
Internet users are confronted with all manner of impositions and questions relating to privacy, yet they typically lack the knowledge to make informed decisions. This can lead to extremes in behaviour. On one hand, some people simply give up, file the problem in the "too hard" basket, and try to ignore it while they go about their online business. Others become paranoid, believing that every cookie or search form constitutes an attempt to seize their personal details for nefarious purposes. Clearly, neither of these extremes is desirable.
Arguably, it is impossible to actually use the internet in any significant or substantial manner, without giving away at least a small degree of privacy. In other words, there is a constant trade-off between productivity-utility and privacy.
One thing is crystal clear, however: You cannot have any reasonable degree of browsing privacy without first instituting sound PC and internet security practices. If you have not yet done so, please visit our Security Tips page and take a security inventory of your computing environment and procedures.
For a more detailed treatment of the subject of privacy try the Internet privacy entry on Wikipedia.