Legislators have presented a Congressional bill to the committee entitled “The Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011”. This has raised some concerns among privacy advocates who said that so far, this would be the biggest threat to civil liberties. They say that many people are prone to think that this legislation is timely and needed to address child pornography. This is expected because every person who is in their right mind should always abhor child pornography.

But why do privacy advocates seem to react negatively to the proposed law? It is because, when it’s thought about fully, such legislation would turn everyone who uses the internet into a victim. They contend that this law, if passed, would require all internet service providers (or ISPs) to track everything that a user does online and save it for 18 months. In addition to this, ISPs are supposed to store this information together with the user’s name, home address, bank account and credit card numbers, and their assigned IP address.

The magnetism of social networking encourages users to share personal information with more than their known friends. In order to expand their circle of “friends”, these people blatantly open themselves up to the whole internet community. Many users no longer value their privacy the way they did before. There is always new technology that becomes accessible, and makes data sharing easier and more enticing.

There are some interesting facts behind Facebook users. Analysts have grouped its more or less 800 million users into three groups. The first set of users includes those who log on at least once daily. The second ones are those who log on at least once a week. The third group includes those members who log on less often. Just recently, a telephone survey was conducted involving the use of Facebook by 2,000 adult respondents. The survey looked into how these respondents value their privacy as it pertains to social networking.

On the whole, the result of the survey showed that the more users log on to Facebook, the less they become concerned about privacy invasion. One respondent openly said that he does not really care if people know about his online favorites or behavior. This user declared that he uses Facebook several times a day, either to meet online with his friends, or to play a popular Facebook-based game.

Aside from the issue of GPS tracking and anonymity in public places, there is also the issue of online surveillance. Resistance was raised against the use of GPS technology for tracking people without a proper warrant. There is now the possibility of losing one’s privacy when the Court allows GPS tracking by the police. This means that GPS tracking devices will be put in public places, and no one will be exempt from being watched.

Aside from public places, people inhabiting the virtual world might also lose their anonymity. With this so-called online surveillance, “movements” of people in cyberspace can be monitored. One example of this technology is Facebook’s face-recognition feature, which was announced last June. In simple terms, this technology allows the scanning of all photos found in its database and attaching to it the user’s name. The image of one user is then automatically tagged and matched with images that are found anywhere else. If the user used his or her real name, as required, he or she can be indentified wherever he or she “goes”.

Using the same technology in the foregoing information, the police could identify previously unidentified criminals. What they could do is post the image of the suspect on Facebook and identify him or her with face-recognition. However, Facebook has received a public outcry regarding the use of this automatic tagging technology. As a result, it decided to give users the choice to opt out of this technique instead of “forcing” it on all of its subscribers.

The increase in the number of online and data privacy cases has triggered the creation of a Privacy Task Force. Connecticut’s Attorney General announced this development last September 15th in response to the increasing internet privacy concerns and data breaches. According to the spokesperson, the task force’s main concern is regarding public education on data protection requirements.

The Attorney General’s office has recognized the need for a program that will openly address these two big issues. Internet and data privacy problems have been affecting the interests of internet users and the public as a whole. At present, there are more or less a dozen current investigations regarding security breaches. Most of these cases involved the loss of medical records of patients, insurance records or customers’ personal information. There are also those that involve the unauthorized gathering of personally identifiable information.

To heighten the campaign in guarding the privacy of consumers, the office has also sought the commitment of giant tech companies. While the investigations are being done, Google and Facebook have also committed to take part in consumer protection. To some extent, the willingness of these companies to get involved in the campaign is gaining success.

It is difficult to set internet use rules for children when the parents themselves do not know about the dangers of irresponsible internet surfing. Parents should first educate themselves about its positive and negative effects on children. Only then can they appropriately set clear and achievable rules on their children’s internet activities. Basically, children should be aware of the limits on the kinds of sites that they could visit, online etiquette (or netiquette), duration of internet use, information that can be shared online, etc.

I have four children, and all of them are using the internet. My three teenage girls, aged 14 to 18, are using the internet mainly for research and social networking. The fourth one, an 11-year old boy, enjoys playing online game applications on social media sites. The eldest was first exposed to the online community when she was 14 years old. That was the first time our family had access to the internet. At first, she was just using it out of curiosity, until she discovered the thrill of social networking.

It was to our family’s advantage that I knew more about the internet than my children. This gave me sufficient control over their online activities. However, I can say that the most challenging area of control among my children is for them to set limits on their time of use. As with other kids, social networking and online gaming can be addicting. Once children get hooked on these games, it is very difficult for them to say “stop”.

Internet privacy issues are certainly not new, but they are not something to be taken for granted. Technology has allowed sharing of information through different means. Users, too, have developed a careless attitude when comes to giving out private information. At first there were no repercussions, but the proliferation of sharing this information has killed privacy. Social networking is one of the areas where users willingly give up their privacy. The sad thing is that many users really don’t care about this, unless they were affected.

One high school English teacher in Georgia lost her job because of the European summer vacation pictures that she posted on Facebook. The school authorities considered these to “promote alcohol use” and “contained profanity”. Many of the pictures showed her holding a glass of wine or a mug of beer. Although she tried to fight back, this experience is something that every social networking fan should learn a lesson from. It is not safe to post even those supposedly innocent pictures on the internet.

The teacher claimed that she used the privacy settings on her Facebook account. She expected that her restrictions would allow only her closest friends to see her photos, but that did not happen. This is clear evidence that privacy settings do not save a user from other prying eyes. Being careful with who can see the posts is not enough to maintain privacy. It is possible that one of her closest friends posted her photos somewhere else.

Despite some privacy concerns, Facebook is still up to making advancement in its services by changing its privacy settings. Several times, this social networking giant has received so much criticism. And yet, here it is once again, changing its privacy settings and rolling out another feature without clarifying what it is about. Will it ever learn a lesson?

Rolled out in the later part of last year, the new service feature is called Tag Suggestions. This feature was added by changing Facebook’s privacy settings, and it allows automatic recognition of a user’s face. Tag Suggestions maps the user’s face and detects whether or not there are matching images, in the same or in other albums, when an image is ready to be tagged. These images are then automatically tagged, saving the user the time in doing so one by one.

It is clear that aside from you, anyone else can tag your photos. There is a chance that someone can tag you in something incriminating although they do not mean to do so. This is very likely to happen because the user might not individually check the tagged images for potential problems. This is even true when someone would purposely put you in hot water because of your photos.

Flink12 is a new social network that puts privacy first. What is a Flink? A Flink is a group of twelve cows. Flink12 allows you to create individual groups of twelve people or Flinks for your friends, family, or coworkers. These Flinks allow you to communicate in a discreet way, sharing professional information with coworkers and personal information with friends and family. These groups of twelve are ideal for sharing different information for different types of relationships. How private, safe and secure is the information into Flink12? Unlike some social networks, Flink12 gives users complete control of their information. Flink12 shares your information only with the people you add to your Flinks. You and your friends on Flink12 are “invisible” and therefore not search-able by search engines such as Google. And, Flink12 will never sell your information to third parties. Try it out at: http://www.flink12.com

Not long ago, people discovered how they can use the internet in a hundred and more ways. Then, they unmindfully provided personal information to various websites that they visited. Later, they were surprised that their shared information had become public. For many, it is already too late to find out which of their visited websites made the information publicly available.

Indeed, many internet users want to regain some degree of their privacy. Looking back and finding out how it happened would put the blame only on them. Typically, users would not take time to read a website’s privacy agreement. It is here where the details of how their shared data will be treated. Probably because of the litany of very small fonts to read, users would blindly agree or accept the terms and conditions. Ironically, they shared some personal information to many sites which they do not even bother to visit again.

Social networking sites and other companies present upfront to their subscribers how their information will be treated. But it would be safe to assume that more than 75% of subscribers do not know about this. Or, at least, at first they did not really care about the so-called privacy. Unluckily for them, they just knew later that third parties may be given access to this information. Considering that a lot of information is public domain, it is not surprising to know how this can easily spread.

The 11th draft of the online privacy bill is soon to be formally introduced. The issue of online privacy has been around for years. Various proposals have been presented to the authorities. Yet until now, the bill is still in its infancy stage and was never given the legal prerequisites for it to be implemented. Critics have repeatedly pointed out the need for updated and relevant internet privacy laws. The present privacy laws being implemented are already outdated and obsolete. These cannot give full protection to users, but the process of updating has been very slow.

One of the advocates of the online privacy bill is Massachusetts Senator John Kerry. For months he has been working on his online privacy bill. In order to establish a stronghold, he sought the support from some of the country’s biggest tech companies. With Senator John McCain of Arizona as co-sponsor, the bill is now supported by eBay, Intel, Microsoft and HP.

Spokespersons from these companies have announced their support to the bill. A Microsoft representative in its statement through Adweek said that the legislation is heading in a positive direction. The company just waits for the approval of the bill and will then issue some more comments.