Privacy Issue Problems for Emailing, AIM and MSN - Essay Example

Privacy Issue Problems for emailing, AIM and MSN Complaints about online privacy issues are becoming part of our society today. People are complaining about privacy issues day in, day out. These complaints range from search engine complains, to complaints about web sites accessing people’s private information without their consent. There have been many concerns raised as far as from lack of online privacy is concerned. Most of these concerns are mainly on the instant chat messaging clients, as well as with many emailing provider companies (Choney 1). For instance, when Google buzz was first released, there were issues about the privacy of users who were using it. This resulted into people having second thoughts of joining or subscribing to such services to receive the services of the company; Google. However, when the issues were resolved, business was good for a while before things got out of hand again later, on when they released Google Plus. Google buzz is embedded into the emailing services provider that Google gives its users. It runs in Gmail emailing services program. Google’s Buzz was not well designed; as a result, there were many loopholes in its design (Choney 1). For instance, it allowed people to share almost everything. In addition to this, anybody who has sent you email can see anything you post using the service or product from Google. This happened only a couple of days after they had released the product and they had to act fast to minimize the damage that could have erupted if the problems were not fixed. There many different people eager and very interested in people’s online conversations, both voice, chat via IM, and in the emails. Providers of broadband services and those of IM services also are eavesdropping and peeking into their customer’s conversation. In other words, the privacy problem as far as Instant Messaging is concerned is a major issue. Instant messaging is gaining popularity at a very high rate as the best form of communication (Spring 1). Many home users like using the different tools of instant messaging but again, most of them are not aware of the privacy issues associated with them. This results in situations that can embarrass people like having too much personal information on the internet that may land in the wrong hands and results to a lot of harm. As much as it is a popular mode of communication among home users, it is slowly gaining its way into the business sector. The companies may not make it legal to use the processes and resources of the company; however, individual users are installing the instant messaging tools on to the machines they use at places work. Although, instant messaging is a good and convenient way to communicate, there are privacy issues that arise because of using these tools (Sans 1). However, not all Instant messaging solutions have the same level of privacy issues neither does all offer the same security or privacy. The main question as far as the IM and emails privacy issue is concerned is whether these services are able to protect users against eavesdropping. While emails can only allow one user to be able to communicate with another and even several others people whether the recipient of the message is online or is not online, instant messaging is a little different. It can be used to communicate with people who mainly are online and connected to the internet. Emails can be hacked into, and the identity of the account holders can be compromised. In the process, valuable information can be stolen for malicious purposes. The mail sent or received is kept on the server just in case the user cannot access the ones on the web site of the company. The email can only be received when the email is retrieved from the mail server. The email can receive and include such things as links to URL’s, attachment files centre. Instant messaging allows for real time communicators. Instant messaging is plagued by so many privacy issues. Some of the problems include the fact that these tools let the world know of a person’s location without personal consent. Instant messaging tools also let anyone in the world know the IP address of the machine being used (Spring 1). The information about the user, as well as information about the machine is also let out to the world. Another thing that makes instant messaging tools unpopular in terms of privacy issue is that it can be targeted just like emails are targeted by spam messages that fill the mail inbox with nothing but unnecessary information that are mainly aimed to defraud the email account holder. Instant messaging tools also have file transfer capabilities. This could expose it as a potential target by people who may want to steal information from the users computers. They may do this by using a virus to the host computer and then waiting for the virus trackers to keep watch of the activities and wait for the whole thing to get the necessary information that the virus author wants from the host computer. The other laxity in security may happen when employees of a certain company also use the instant messages tools without knowing that it is a security risk, which can open up the whole organization network for scrutiny and to unsecured traffic. It is not a secret that emails are being hacked. MSN, AIM emails, and email providers like Google have been victims very many times. Such occurrences can destroy the trust a person has for the products of a given company. Eventually, things will change. For this change to happen IM providers, need to ensure that they offer complete encryption. This is important since unencrypted IM messages can easily be intercepted and decoded by someone using free software such as the dSniff. This can also happen to VoIP calls and e-mail. Another solution that can be employed to ensure IM and e-mail services privacy is for providers such as MSN or Google ensures that no connection logs is stored in their server, or they can delete them after some time. Finally, IM providers can also opt to adopt Jabber. This closed, proprietary system enables and allows organizations to completely run their own serves and offers more flexibility. It use encryption to protect conversations once there is an established connection as well as during log on. Works Cited Choney, Suzanne. "Online privacy issues, complaints familiar." 17 February 2010. msn. 29 February 2012 . Sans. "Instant Messaging: How Secure Is It?" 20 April 2001. Sans. 29 February 2012 . Spring, Tom. "Who’s Reading Your Instant Messages?" 25 May 2010. PCWorld. 29 February 2012 . Read More