OBSERVING YOU IN CYBERSPACE: THE KNOWN AND UKNOWN

The statistics of World Internet usage published by Internet World Stats sprang up to 1,966,514,816 as at june 30, 2010. According to the publication, there was a percentage growth of 444.8 from 2000 to 2010, an indication of a growing interest in the Internet. The Internet, otherwise referred to as Cyberspace could be accessed by using different technologies and devices from any earthly location and these means of accessibility are perceptible to individuals, organisations and Institutions of states. The perceptibility of these devices makes it possible for users browsing activities in cyberspace to be subjected to monitoring.

According to Dinev & et. al. (2005), the activities of Internet users generate detailed electronic footprints or trails that could reveal their behaviour and interests. This is made feasible by using sophisticated technologies to carry out a continuous and concentrated online monitoring prevalently referred to as “Surveillance and Profiling”.

The Civil Society Internet Rights Project (CSIR) defines Surveillance as the monitoring of activities of an individual, group or groups of people whilst the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines Profiling as the activity of collecting information about someone, in order to give a description of them.

Users of Cyberspace are seldom aware of the Surveillance and Profiling capabilities (Cavoukian & Tapscott, 1997) and the fact that their browsing activities and behaviour could be monitored. Consequently, Cyberspace users freely give out information about themselves oblivious of its implications. This information is used to create a unique and privately owned knowledge of Internet users regarding their lifestyle and social identity (Corien, 2009). According to Lyon (1994), Internet users who are aware of such practices are however unconscious of how much others know about them.

Each passing day, Cyberspace users unconsciously feed the growth of Surveillance by needlessly providing Information about themselves and allowing strangers into their lives (Cavoukian & Tapscott, 1997). The practice of Profiling and Surveillance starts the very moment a user visits a website. These websites either installs or use cookies, log files, web bugs, spyware, IP Address, transaction information, click history, etc, to monitor or transmit information to a host computer using a unique identifier (Thibodeau, 2000; Bennet, 2001; Martin, Wu & Alsaid, 2003; Mobbs, 2003; Strandburg & Raicu, 2006).

Whilst some websites indicate their surveillance capabilities in their privacy policies, others barely make such disclosures to users. A survey carried out by Ansah (2010), revealed that majority of Cyberspace users seldom read the Privacy Policies of websites that collects their Personal Identifiable Information. As a result, if the website publishes Information about its surveillance activities, users extend their contribution towards the success of the surveillance network by providing Information that could be used to trace both their online and offline identity.

REFERENCES:

Ansah, P (2010). Profiling and Surveillance in Cyberspace: The Problem of User Identity. MSc thesis, Middlesex University, London.

Cavoukian, A., & Tapscott, D. (1997). Who Knows: Safeguarding your Privacy in a networked world.
New York: McGraw - Hill.

Corien, P. J. (2009). Selling my soul to the Digital world. Amsterdam Law Forum , Vol. 1 (No. 4)

Dinev, T., & et al. (2005). Internet Users’ Privacy Concerns and Attitudes towards Government
Surveillance – An Exploratory Study of Cross-Cultural Differences between Italy and the United
States. 18th Bled eConference eIntegration in Action. Slovenia.

Internet Rights. (2010). Fact Sheets: Privacy and surveillance. Retrieved July 2, 2010, from
http://www.internetrights.org.uk/factsheets.shtml?cmd[512]=i-512-
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Internet World Statistics - http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

Lyon, D. (1994). The Electronic Eye: The Rise of Surveillance Society. Cambridge: Polity Press

Martin, D., Wu, H., & Alsaid, A. (2003). Hidden surveillance by Web sites: Web bugs in contemporary use. Communications of the ACM , 46 (12), 258 - 264.

Mobbs, P. (2003, April 1). Privacy and Surveillance: How and when organisations and the state can monitor your actions. Retrieved June 3, 2010, from http://www.internetrights.org.uk/briefings/irtb05-rev1-draft.pdf

Strandburg, K. J., & Raicu, D. S. (2006). Privacy and technologies of identity: a cross-disciplinary conversation. New York: Springer Inc.

Thibodeau, P. (2000). Online Profiling. Retrieved May 26, 2010, from Computer World:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/50332/Online_Profiling