The Electronic Frontier Foundation - Essay Example

While browsing, one must not go for searching their private information, such as username, address, and other sensitive information like social security number and credit card number. Such searches provide a way to access the user’s doorway. And thus, hackers can easily attack, and users face the issues like identity theft as well as other phishing problems (Eckersley, Schoen, and Bankston).

As the ISP has the information regarding the user’s identity, it can connect this information with the user’s searches, or also it can bundle up all the user’s searches within a solo search history. One must be careful or must not use URLs like http://search.comcast.net when the user has a subscription from Comcast Broadband. In the same way, if the user is an AOL subscriber, then it should avoid using the search icon within the AOL client software or URL http://search.aol.com (Eckersley, Schoen, and Bankston).

Usually, search engines provide the user with the option to form a private account and go searching. However, it also happens that these search engines are linked to further services, which creates a situation where the user either login to a search engine or any linked service, then these services are associated with one another or all in all, to the private account of the user. Examples of such affiliations include the association of MSN with the MSN messenger and Hotmail, Google with Google Chat and Gmail, as well as A9 links with Amazon. Thus, if the users are using the services like Hotmail or Gmail, then they must not use their linking search engines, for example, using a Hotmail account, the user should search from MSN, particularly when they are using that account (Eckersley, Schoen, and Bankston; McCandlish).

Additionally, there are some small pieces of information named cookies, which are entered into the computer by the websites, when the users use these websites. These cookies allow the websites to associate the user’s searches and other functions with the website.  Subsequently, these cookies put in the computer can allow the websites to find the user’s information, yet if the user is using diverse internet linkages in diverse places. Only if the user is using another computer, then these cookies cannot do anything like this (Eckersley, Schoen, and Bankston).

From the viewpoint of security concerns, the best solution would be to impede these cookies. But as the cookies are mandatory for retrieving some websites, thus another solution for this, while less secure, would be to permit the temporarily using of session cookies. As these cookies survive just for the time when the user has opened the browser, consequently, when the user leaves the browser and revives it while entering again into search engines, then the search engine is unable to provide the user a link between recent searches with the old ones through cookies (Eckersley, Schoen, and Bankston).

The user can also use other systems as proxies to shield the user’s IP address from the linked computers through the internet and the websites the user is visiting. The proxies are used by users to transmit the message to the proxy that is transmitted to the projected receiver, and after getting a response from that receiver, the proxy transmits the response to the computer. Though it seems to be very complex and can also be much more complex, but is possible (Eckersley, Schoen, and Bankston).