Internet Privacy: Is This A Joke or What? sanya gupta | Posted On: February 22 2008 How many times have you surfed to a new site, only to be asked for your name, birthday and gender? Did you enter the information that was requested? And if you did enter it, was it the real information or something you made up? I don't know about you, but I find sites which needlessly ask for personal information to be annoying. In fact, I will leave a site the moment a site requires me to enter anything which is not necessary to complete the transaction. Yes, I do understand that when I apply for a credit card I need to enter my social security number, birthday and mother's maiden name. In these instances, the purpose of the information is readily apparent - it is needed in order to obtain my credit record. This is normal and expected and thus I don't even think about entering the data. They obviously don't need this data to create a free mailbox - so there must be some other purpose which is not obvious. Of course, they want this data so they can build a profile about me, which in turn can be used to target advertising to me and other's like me. My personal information is not likely to be used specifically - rather, it is grouped together and sold as a unit. Yeah, I know they promise in their privacy policy that the information will not be abused - but Amazon recently told us all how important privacy policies are to corporate America. This company simply modified the policy to allow the information to be sold to third parties! They sent out an email informing all of their customers that the information which used to be private is private no longer. So a privacy policy does not appear to be a binding document - at least, it's not if it can be changed at will. What this means is a privacy policy is essentially worthless, even if you completely trust the company. Why worthless? Well, if that company that you trust with all of your personal data is sold, it is no longer run by the people that have earned your trust. New owners could easily modify the policy at any time. In the company that I work for, it is a serious offense to let other's in the company find out how much money you make. In fact, you could be fired if you told another employee your salary. Yet you have to enter that same highly sensitive data to get a free email account! What is the point of all of this? Well, you just need to be careful about giving out your personal information over the internet. So before you type in that personal data ask yourself a few questions. Do I really need this service? - When I am asked something personal that I would rather not give out, this is the first thing that I ask. Is this service really that important? For me, half the time the answer is no. If it is important, I usually find that I can pay some small fee for the same service without giving any personal data, and that's what I usually wind up doing. What is this information likely to be used for? - This is obvious when I'm entering information to get a credit card, and not so obvious when I want a free email account. Remember, you never get something for nothing - there is always a price, even if it is well hidden. Find out what the site is going to use the information for before you enter it. Personally, I am least likely to give away personal information that is to be used for marketing purposes, no matter how much benefit I will gain for that data. It is not one of my primary goals in life to make it easier for advertisers to target me for their messages. In fact, I would rather not get their ads at all. The key is simple. Before you enter that information into the web form, do a little research and find out what the data is going to be used for. Think for a moment about how you would feel if everyone knew, then decide for yourself if you still want to enter it. That's all I've got to say about that.