The Web: The battle for privacy online

United Press International ^ | March 16, 2005 | UPI

[Writer1]

Chicago, IL, Mar. 16 (UPI) -- The second you send an e-mail from your PC, your personal privacy probably has been compromised. E-mail messages hop from your computer over a number of networks to their final destination, but like a postcard from a vacationer in Mexico, the content can be perused by anyone, at anytime, before it is delivered, experts told UPI's The Web.

"E-mail is completely open," said Jeff Multz, vice president of sales at SecureWorks Inc., a computer security services firm in Atlanta. "People think it is secure when it is sent over a network, but that is misnomer No. 1. We don't send out bills or payments for bills through the regular mail without an envelope, but on the Internet we send out open communications all the time." By Gene Koprowski

[Writer1]

A story about the lack of personal privacy online.

[Beemnseven]

I thought we had no right to privacy.

[Abcdefg]

Wasn't privacy included in the Constitution's penumbras?

[tfecw]

Phone calls aren't secure either.

If someone wants their email secure, encrypt it. I wouldn't really call that a battle

[jdege]

It's not a story about privacy, it's a story about idiocy.

If you want secure communications, use a secure protocol. Use ssh instead of telnet. Wrap your emails in PGP. Whatever.

The secure protocols are out there, and people have been using them successfully for decades.

The only problem is with people who have absurd expectations.

[Beemnseven]

Wasn't privacy included in the Constitution's penumbras?

No, it doesn't. And according to many conservatives, since the word "privacy" is not specifically spelled out in the Constitution, the people have absolutely no right to it.

[DJ Frisat]

Sure, it's "insecure", but not as insecure as the nitwits who try to scare us out of our pajamas with alarmist nonsense like "the content can be peruse by anyone, anytime..."

Utter twaddle. When was the last time YOU intercepted and read the email of anybody you wanted to as it was en route to its destination? Just as I thought...