Written by: Yutaka
Categoly: Reserch paper
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Internet Security

Do you know that you are not secure while using your computer?  The rapid development of modern technology and the increased needs of information processing have resulted in the information-oriented society.  Many types of modern equipments, such as the automatic teller machine, the telephone exchange, and the ticket reservation machine, contain computers.  Doing anything without computers is no longer possible.  When it comes to home-use, computers seem to have replaced typewriters.  Moreover, the recent onslaught of the Internet has encouraged people to have computers in their home.  The Internet is a convenient network on which people can access every kind of information all over the world;  however, it is also dangerous if people do not care about their security.  In order to avoid trouble on the Internet, people should know about major security issues, such as spam mail, spyware, viruses, vulnerability of long time connection, and safety of e-commerce (electronic commerce).

The plainest trouble is spam mail.  Delivered to unspecified people at the same time, spam mail often violates people’s privacies.  Privacy is defined as two rights:  the first right is being free from disturbance, and the second right is having control over his or her private information (“Privacy” 5).  Therefore, privacy violation includes intrusion from someone as well as disclosure of personal information.  When people check their e-mail (electronic mail), most people find some strange mail sent to their addresses from unknown senders.  This mail usually has commercial contents, such as advertising healthy mushrooms, offering discounted travels, asking to join network communities, or announcing new services.  Sometimes, people find such useless mail more than expecting mail that they want to receive.  Penenberg claims that people are enduring a bombardment of junk mail.  However, most people don’t know how the senders find their addresses.  As a matter of fact, those senders collect people’s information from the history that people make on the Internet during their netsurfing (Branscum).  This is further compounded when the senders use personal information without the owners’ consent.  In fact, many companies collect incredible amount of personal information such as “who they are, what they like, what they dislike, when they were born and credit-card information” (Branscum).  However, the reason they collect the information is very simple:  they can profit from the information.  William E. Whyman states, “Customer data is the gold mine of e-commerce” (Stepanek);  therefore, leaving as little information as possible on the Internet contributes to reduce spam mail.

Although spam mail is visible privacy violation, spyware is invisible.  Spyware is software that sends information through the Internet connection without the users’ consent (Hawkins).  Spyware are contained in many programs, sometimes in programs that people buy in a shop, but more likely in programs that people download from the Internet.  The purpose of spyware is to collect users’ information, such as ages, sexes, or addresses for market research or statistics.  For many people, the collection of their information without their consent is not comfortable, especially, when they are unaware of the content.  For example, Michael B. Stone discovered mischievous spyware in children’s software, and he observed its Internet transmission;  nonetheless, he couldn’t understand what information was sent because the information was encrypted beyond his decoding abilities (Hawkins).  This type of privacy invasion is hard to find unless people have enough skill to find it.  What people can do to avoid spyware is downloading software from decent and reliable sites.

Virus is similar to spyware because of its invisibility.  Virus is software that secretly duplicates itself and put copies into other software.  Virus comes from another program that is infected by having the virus embedded or accompanied with that program (Parker 72).  Because of virus’s characteristic, which is a need for programs to spread out, file-transmissions help viruses to infect other software.  The Internet is an easy place to propagate viruses because people often transmit files by sending e-mail with attached files or downloading files from various sites.  As a result, viruses can easily spread out and bother many people all over the world.  Although viruses continually flood the Internet, most of them are just mischievous and harmless;  in contrast, some of them cause serious damages to people’s environments.  Simonds states, “[T]heir effects can range from the annoying but harmless prank to damaged files and crashed networks” (19).  Well-scattered viruses really cost people to cope them.  For example, the famous Melissa virus inflicted approximately US$80 million in losses (Chen).  One way to prevent virus’s damages is to install anti-virus software.  Anti-virus software is made to detect and remove many kinds of viruses hiding in computers although it might not be able to detect unknown viruses.  Kerstetter states that anti-virus software is installed in 90 % of computers in companies.  In order to avoid becoming virus victims, people should check all received and downloaded files before they open files as well as check their computers daily by anti-virus software.

Whereas viruses are single-shot of maliciousness, long time connection to the Internet allows users to be a constant target.  Long time connection is one thing most people don’t consider as vulnerability.  The popularity of the Internet and the needs of constant connection have led to long time, often 24 hours, connection by using latest technologies, such as DSL (digital subscriber line) and cable modem.  24 hours connection sounds fascinating and, in fact, is really useful;  people can receive e-mail without any delay, listen Internet radio while they are doing their work, say hello to their friends when the friends come to online, and check online sources over writing a research paper.  However, if the connection time becomes longer, the risk also increases.  Lankford alarms that if people are online at any time, their computer is vulnerable to malicious hackers because the hackers have enough time to find and attack their computers.  Similarly, Bencivenga states that since the line is always on, computers always have connection to the Internet, where strangers are working, peeking, and eavesdropping.  In brief, people should realize that long time connection to the Internet is vulnerable because of its convenience.

Although safety of long time connection is an individual issue, safety of e-commerce is a crucial issue for both online merchants and net consumers.  The Internet is not only a treasure house of knowledge but also a huge shopping mall where people can buy anything without going out to anywhere;  however, in some aspects, e-commerce becomes a source of trouble.  One major problem is privacy policies of e-commerce sites.  Most sites store and sell customers’ information that is sent by order forms.  More than 90% of online merchants exchange customers’ e-mail addresses with other merchants (E-Commerce).  Since e-commerce requires detail of personal information like a name, an address, and a credit card number, this privacy violation should be taken seriously;  however, not all merchants take customers’ privacy seriously.  For instance, only 20% of companies have adequate policies for protecting privacy (Green).

Security reliability of e-commerce is another major problem.  When people send their personal information to e-commerce sites, they should aware that the site is using secure protocol that avoids eavesdropping by malicious hackers.  People can distinguish secure sites by looking at “symbols like a key, or a lock, or a homepage address with [a] ‘s’ (for secure) after the ‘http’ ” (E-Commerce).  However, in the worst case, this security system is not enough.  If a site stores users information in the computer connected to the Internet, the computer might be hacked by a knowledgeable thief.  For example, last December, credit card numbers were posted on the Internet by someone who had stolen them from an online music retailer (Scheer).  The vulnerability of e-commerce is one reason that e-commerce is still not popular despite the prevalence of the Internet.  According to the Commerce Department of the U.S., online retail business recorded less than 0.65% share in total retail business in the last quarter of 1999 (Kappelman).  E-commerce will be a potential business in near future, but to increase its sale, online merchants have to establish firmer security.

Provided with all kinds of information, up-to-date news, intriguing entertainments, and wide-range shops, the Internet has become a very convenient equipment;  however, to enjoy safe cruising, there are some major concerns of which people should aware:  spam mail, spyware, viruses, vulnerability of long time connection, and safety of e-commerce.  As the Internet expands its ability in many fields, people will have more opportunities to face the Internet and its security concerns.  Development of security technologies and privacy legislations might reduce the Internet problems.  However, self-defense is always necessary, and it is effective and reliable way, which people can do now.  People’s understandings of security issues will contribute to the development of the Internet and provide people with more convenient and more satisfying lifestyles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

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Scheer, Lisa. “Master of Your Domain.” Forbes 22 May 2000:58. Academic Search Elite. Online. Electronic Library Network. 30 June 2000.

Simonds, Fred. Network Security: data and voice communication. Toronto:  McGraw-Hill, 1996.

Stepanek, Marcia. “None of Your Business.” Business Week 26 June 2000: 78-79. Academic Search Elite. Online. Electronic Library Network. 30 June 2000.