Computer Security And Surfing
What is "encryption"?
Encryption is a process in which data is encoded so that it can be sent over lines, network lines, the Internet, and it is decoded on the end where it is received. That way, the information, if it's intercepted between the sender and the receiver, actually is meaningless: it's a bunch of jumbled garbage.
What do I do if I get the "you are entering an unsecured site" box?
If you're entering a page and a box comes up or there's any kind of notification that the site is not secure, you have to basically decide what the relative risk level is. Are you going to be providing any sensitive information? If not, there's really probably little harm in going. If the site in insecure and it's asking for personal information, then you might want to double think about entering any information in this site.
Can I ask a website to remove my personal information?
In theory, if you write to a website and ask them to remove all of your personal data they are obligated to do so. Again, that's in theory, I'm not sure it's in practice. Much like the real world, the more legitimate an operation or business is, the more likely they are to comply with these kinds of policies. The more fly-by-night, shady, unknown or small-scale businesses and operations may not remove personal data when asked. In my experience, legitimate businesses do follow these practices. And some of the smaller companies that don't immediately remove personal data it's not always for malicious purposes, sometimes it's difficult, they don't have someone to maintain a website and they don't mean any harm, but nonetheless your information hasn't been removed. Persistence is often key in seeing that your personal information is removed from sites that you do not want it to reside in.
Should I read a website's privacy policy, and what should I look for if I do?
The majority of websites, especially commercial websites, have a privacy policy. While they can be long and cumbersome, it is often worthwhile reading them, if for nothing else, to find out what their policy is on selling their mailing list. What that means is that they either will or will not sell the collection of names, essentially e-mail addresses, that have registered with their site. Whether this is important to you or not is a personal decision, but a lot of the spam that you receive in in your mail box every day comes from companies that have purchased mailing lists from other companies.
What can I do if I think a company violated its own privacy policy?
If you feel that a company has violated its own privacy policy, or at least not adhered to it, I would certainly first contact that company with some kind of demonstrable communication, such as an email or a letter, and give them an opportunity to correct the violation of the privacy policy. If not, they're a business like any other, and you have outlets such as the Better Business Bureau, you might also want to take the violation of the privacy policy up with an ISP that is providing hosting with that site, or other companies that are related with that site.
