Internet and electronic news have become part of our daily life and have made our daily and school life more convenient and comfortable. However, it is a controversial matter how much information we are allowed to get from them and how our privacy is protected.
In my opinion, “e-commerce” is beneficial both for customers and sellers. Consumers enjoy shopping whenever they want, and sellers start online business with less costs. However, is our privacy is protected? Of course, the information of credit cards and bank accounts is protected, but what about our email addresses and home addresses? Why do we receive spam and letters from the companies we don’t know? I am trying not to buy anything from the websites that I cannot fully trust, but I’m still afraid that some information is leaked out to unknown people. There is some terminology that I don’t know in chapter 10. My concern is that, if a computer develops way too much, we may not be able to track how our privacy is protected.
As for news, it seems to me that right to the privacy and the right to access information contradict each other. As the text book points out, victims and their families are afraid that the information revealed to the media might cause a similar tragedy somewhere else. Also, they might think that the media infringe on their privacy, because the media asks for an excessive number of interviews.
On the other hand, some people claim that the privacy of suspects and their families is also protected, which means the media should limit reporting about suspects. People who are not involved in an incident may want to know what happens in their country, claiming that it is their right. The textbook uses the examples of the spree on the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. The suspect was actually a man who moved from Korea when he was a child. It was shocking and a little bit annoying for me when I read some articles saying that Korean students in the area called themselves Japanese when the incident occurred so that they would not be discriminated against and mobbed. Some Asian countries were afraid that the suspect would be a person from their country. The incident might have been shocking to a Korean American community, but what we can learn from the incident is that there are still racial problems around the US. It is very difficult to how to report and issue.
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4 comments:
The whole idea of e-commerce is very interesting. I am glad you brought up the idea of privacy online. Can we ever know for sure if our privacy is being kept safe. Information has always been sought after for many purposes but this new e-commerce landscape offers newer more profitable uses for your private information.
I like you how you bring up those problems that might occurs in a "e-commerce" world. Privacy is no longer existed since the internet technology is so advanced. There were the cases of phone number, address, and evey credit card numbers leaking out in Taiwan. So putting up our personal information need to pay extra attention and we have to be more considerable.
I completely agree with you about the thought that we don't ever really know whether or not our privacy is protected, or how for that matter. So many people lose their credit card information and are the victims of fraud every year from different scams over the Internet. I think that many people still have the illusion that using a screen name over the Internet makes them anonymous and safe from harm.
Internet privacy is definitely something to be concerned about, but my feeling is as the Internet develops, so will more advanced methods to protect us. As far as I know, spam messages derive from various websites that sell your email address; say you sign up for a weekly newsletter, which in turn sells your address to a marketing firm who uses it for advertising. It's not all that much different from telemarketing, if you think about it.
Problem is it still hasn't advanced far enough to quiet all fears. But it'll happen.
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