Impact of Sharing Personal Information Online - Essay Example

Impact of sharing personal information Online Internet can be considered as a boon to the society, as it had made many day to day as well as specialized activities of the people quite easy. That is, surfing for general information, hunting for a life partner, getting in touch with the dear ones, making online bank transactions and a lot more can be done with the internet. Though it provides more constructive and helpful applications, it can suck the uninformed users into deeper mess as the sharing of their personal details could be negatively used by many unscrupulous elements. Sharing of the information in the internet such as the personal information, contact numbers, and quite crucially bank account details, credit details, etc., are quiet risky, because there are more online hackers who are just waiting for the internet users to make a mistake, so they can access all these crucial personal information and can use them in a negative way. One of the main online crimes occurring these days are the hacking of the financial details of the individuals, and all their hard earned money will be into the hands of the hackers. Yet another crime that happens over the internet includes gaining access to the personal information of the internet users particularly those in the social networking sites and misusing them. It is becoming highly difficult to stay away and remain protected from these cyber crimes. Even if the internet users limit their usages to just checking their mails and corresponding with their family members and friends in the social media, they are subjected to the risk of identity fraud. In addition, the business organizations also fall victim to these cyber crimes or hacking, losing many of their critical and valuable information. This article will focus on how most internet users including both individuals and businesses underestimate the risks of sharing personal information online, leading to legal and illegal access to those information by hackers, resulting in many online and offline crimes According to the 2011 Identity Survey report conducted by the Javelin strategy and research, 8.1 million people were victims of identity fraud in the United States in 2011. (Northern Trust). The online identity fraud is mainly caused due of the input or sharing of the personal details of an individual on the internet. The personal details can include the name of an individual, contact numbers, address, bank details, etc.. This information can be procured by the unscrupulous elements through the various spam email messages. These messages attract the users by announcing them as lucky winners and that they have won million dollars. They insist the users to submit their personal details including the bank name and account numbers, ultimately leading to the misuse of the information. “To further complicate matters, many online criminals have perfected copying the graphics of trusted companies, making the emails look official and therefore trustworthy, and could make the exact replica of the famous websites. (Northern Trust). In those cases, the individuals could be redirected to these fraudulent websites, and they could give their key details there. In addition, the identity threat can also allows the hackers to misuse the personal information of an individual particularly their credit card details, to come up with bogus credit cards, which they can use to illegally purchase goods and buy other services. Recent researches state that most of the online users are not aware of these crimes and thereby underestimate the risks of sharing their personal information online. As a result they get trapped, leading to loss of financial fortunes as well as other key information. Hence the details such as the name of the user, date of birth, bank details and the other details such as the driving license number should be kept confidential and should not be revealed unnecessarily. As far as the credit card details are concerned, the online credit card users can protect themselves by having a keen eye on the credit score and setting up alerts when the credit balance changes unexpectedly. In addition, many banks are coming up with a Virtual or digital credit card, which the user can create in the banking websites within few minutes, and use for short-term transactions, instead of the original credit cards. “Virtual Credit Cards are cards which are generated online, they are not physical but digital in nature. These are used if you don’t want to reveal your exact Credit card details to anyone” (Khan 2011). Social networking has doubled since the year 2007. “According to a 2011 survey from the web analytics firm COM score, the average online users in the United States now spend nearly sixteen percentage of his or her time on social networking sites.”(Northern Trust). Thus, the identity fraud, due to the sharing of information, is particularly visible in the Social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter, etc., In the case of the social networking areas, the teenagers and young adults are mainly targeted and they fall the prey to the identity theft. When this identity theft or fraud happens, the criminals will spread damaging news or issues using the stolen profiles, causing serious problems to the owner of the profile. Apart from the sharing of the personal information, they also upload their pictures in the social networking sites. Thus, it becomes easy to the online criminals to misuse the pictures of the young women which can create drastic aftereffects in their lives. “The privacy issue that the social networking sites face is that they encourage users to over share their private information that can be easily used against them.”(Sweeny 2011). In addition, these social networking and other websites encourages the users to check in or provide information about their locations real-time in order to win points and earn badges and discounts. This provides opportunities for the miscreants particularly robbers to loot the house, as they will be fully aware of the movements of the users. “A website called as please rob me has been set up to raise awareness about the over-sharing and highlights these kinds of privacy issues that social networks create.” (Sweeny 2011). Although, these crimes occurs because of the lack of awareness and the underestimation of risks of sharing information online, it could also happen due to the weak security features of these social networking sites. It may be due to the inadequate security measures on the servers where the information is kept. Also, they could carelessly make the personal information available to the hackers. So, the servers holding this personal information has to be protected with effective safety measures through software and even through physical security. (Kotulic and Clark 2004). On the part of the individuals, who are active in the social networking sites, it is crucial that certain pieces of information are not posted in these websites. Even if they post it, all the security options should be enabled, so that the user to make certain photos or information available only to a selected group or set of people. In addition, “subscribing to Facebook security news feed will keep you abreast of new threats and scams and inform you about new security features as theyre brought online.” (Widman, 2009). When it comes to business organizations, both online and offline crimes could take place through various avenues. The illegal obtaining of the trademarks, copy rights and other financial documents can be defined as one of the major impact of hacking in large firms. “Two sophisticated attacks in 2010 against Google’s systems which stole some of the internet giant’s program code – its intellectual property.” (Arthur 2011). In an organization, the confidential information with respect to the businesses are maintained in the servers and they are accessed by the top level management authorities. There is always a possibility of the criminals accessing an organization’s top level secrets in an unauthorized manner which consequently lead to the other drastic effects to the organization. Majority of the cyber attacks that takes place on the business firm are mainly to extract the intellectual property details. China- based hackers are involved in the cyber crime where they also steal the sensitive and the classified data about an organization. McAfee one of the cyber crime detecting software had found that Chinese hackers have extracted data from the global oil, energy and petrochemical companies. Thus the “energy companies spend hundreds of million dollars each year dispatching geologist, work crews, and sophisticated exploration equipment to remote parts of the globe to search for oil and gas.” (Yemma 2101). The other types of cyber attacks like stealing the credit card information of the company’s customers and other financial information of an individual are done by the European and the Russian based hackers. These information can be called as the crown jewel of the company and can also be named as the Critical asset information (CAI). With this information only, the company bids on the concession on drills for oil generation and thereby they develop the needed resources. To collect the information, the energy companies might have spent years together in analyzing and to frame the report. But the hackers who hack this information can easily outbid the competitors and can save millions just by skipping the exploration. (Kotulic and Clark 2004). Thus the Chinese hackers’ uses hacking tools such as the malware that can record the keystrokes, and above all can steal and decrypt the data. After decrypting the data it is copied and compressed and sent to the attackers’ computer. The malware can delete itself and can appear when it is needed. In the same way the information from other companies such as the finance and insurance companies can be hacked. In the case of insurance companies, the personal details about the client can be procured by sending emails and the data is misused. Most of the energy company’s confidential data like the number of employees, stock details, inventory details, and other account information can be hacked through accessing the public servers. Thus it is always advisable for the companies to have the strong security features, so that they can easily detect the hackers and can protect their confidential information. With the internet and its various applications becoming extensive and popular day by day, the rise in the negative effects leading to both online and offline crimes has also increased. So, it is up to an individual to keep their personal details confidential without providing room to the hackers to steal the information. Also the business firms irrespective of their sizes should maintain an optimum security mechanism with antivirus softwares and tools, so that they can overcome the hackers. References: Arthur, C., 2011. Chinese cyber-attacks ‘pinned to users’, [Online] Available from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/dec/12/china-us-hacking- tensions(Accessed on April 11, 2012) Kotulic, A. and Clark, JG., 2004. Why there aren’t more information security research studies, Information & Management, vol. 41, pp. 597-607 Northern Trust., 2012. Are Your Assets at Risks of Cyber Crime? [Online] Available from: http://www.northerntrust.com/wealth/12-winter/cyber-crime.html (Accessed on April 11, 2012). Saqib Khan., 2011. What is HDFC Netsafe Virtual Credit Card and How it Works, [Online] Available from: http://www.technostarry.com/extras/using-hdfc-netsafe-virtual-credit-card- how-vcc-works/(Accessed on April 11, 2012) Sweeny, R., 2011. Social Networking Sites; More harm than Good, [Online] Available from: http://networkconference.netstudies.org/2011/04/social-networking-sites- more-harm-than-good/(Accessed on April 11, 2012) Widman, J., 2009. Facebook’s Privacy Options, [Online] Available from: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9131913/Facebook_s_privacy_option s(Accessed on April 11, 2012) Yemma, J., 2010. When cyber-attacks hits U.S Energy Companies, We all pay, [Online] Available from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-yemma/when- cyber-attacks-hit-us_b_437056.html(Accessed on April 11, 2012) Read More