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Private Matters
The increasing popularity of Internet shopping is now raising concerns

Since the late 70s, privacy activists have been working to educate the general populace regarding the tremendous amount of personal information about our lives that is gathered and stored by commercial enterprises. Throughout the 80s and early 90s, most of their attention was focused on direct marketers and other advertisers. These folks became experts at mining public information sources and recording point-of-sale data (which could be linked to credit card and checking account numbers) for the purpose of linking demographic information to consumer behavior. Where our fears for our privacy once revolved around paranoid notions of some centralized, governmental "Big Brother" knowing all and seeing all, we came to understand that far greater potential for use and abuse of private information springs from our economic system rather than our political system.

As the 90s have progressed, however, our concerns over privacy issues have been forcibly refocused on the Internet phenomenon. Why do I say forcibly? Well, for starters, as the 90s dawned, very few people envisioned the Internet as a commercial concern. The only browsers were text browsers, and one had go to some lengths to acquire the knowledge to successfully navigate what was essentially a command-line, Unix-based environment. Moreover, the vast majority of information available via the Internet was academic in nature, and held the promise of few thrills for the average citizen. Then Mosaic, the first widely-accepted graphics-based browser, arrived. Entrepreneurs and opportunists began to take note, and by the time the first version of Netscape Navigator found its way onto personal computers, the commercial Internet was launched, never to be deterred.

There were still a couple of conditions that had to be met before our concerns became fully realized. The first of the two has been gradually met over the past few years, as the software for transacting business and acquiring information about consumers over the Internet has been developed and deployed. This is a two-fold issue. On one hand, there is the matter of the extent of the information that an Internet business can glean from a consumer's computer without the consumer knowing about it. Additionally, there are concerns about the easily traceable electronic trail that each transaction leaves.

On the other hand, there is the question of Internet security and the possibility of your private information being intercepted by any semi-competent computer science undergraduate. It really is about that easy. You see, the Internet was never intended to be a secure transmission facility. After its genesis as a Defense Department experiment in networking, it was adopted by the academic community as a means to promote the free and open flow of (scientifically) useful information. The basis for Internet transmission, TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol), is not even particularly well-suited for attempting to establish secure transmission methods.

Over the course of the last year, the second condition has been met. We have been waiting for the consumer computer age, and essentially, it has arrived -- sooner than expected. There are now personal computers in over half of all U.S. homes. This development is due, in part, to the growing popularity of the Internet. The main reason, however, is the introduction of low-cost (less than $1000) desktop computers, which now account for 61% of all computer sales. Half of these customers have never owned a computer before. Fifty-six percent of these sales were to households with an annual income of $35,000 or less, resulting in something of a democratization of computer use, and an explosion of growth in Internet commerce.

In next month's column, we will take a look at some specific privacy issues and how they are being addressed.