Privacy Control Measures

Firstly, websites should give a conspicuous notice to consumers regarding their information practices, like what the collect, means of collection, the reasons for collecting, their choice, and access provision, and security assurance. Secondly, websites should give choices to the consumer on the secondary use (either internal or external) of the provided personal information beyond the original intentions.

Thirdly, websites should give reasonable access to consumer on the information they provide, like editing of the profiles. Finally, website should protect information that is given by a consumer (Schiffman, 2003) The trend in the Internet privacy is alarming. The consumer content from the Internet is exemplified by some portals, like My Yahoo!, affects Web surfing experience, and information highway continues to change media perceptions (Campbell, Martin, & Fabos, 2011). In the year 2010, my identity was compromised, the personal information I had provided on some websites in the Internet was accessed by unknown people. I had to fix the situation, so the first defense was to sign up to the Life-lock to protect my identity, and ensure overall protection (Life-Lock is a company based in United States, and offers an identity-theft protection. They protect against credit fraud, and alert the person whenever they detect any hacking to personal information); then I deleted any unwanted information on any public site, such as classmates.com, Myspace, Facebook, etc. Currently, I have protected my identity, and have it monitored at all times. This is giving me a peace of mind, as I do not have to worry about my private data any more. The experience of being a victim of identity theft has made me much more aware of what I put to the Internet, and how I need to secure my privacy settings on all sites. Knowledge of what each site keeps, and what information they sell is important, when signing up for anything on the Internet.