Privacy is a concept that is neither clearly understood nor clearly defined. It is a fundamental human right recognized all over the world, enshrined in numerous international human rights instruments. It protects human dignity and other values such as freedom of expression, information and association. Thus, it has become one of the most important human rights in modern age. In most of the countries Privacy is fused with Data protection, which interprets privacy as management of personal information. Privacy is the interest that individuals have in sustaining a ‘personal space’, free from interference by other people and organizations. People enjoy having private spaces, and want to keep them. In rather strict context, Privacy protection is seen as a way of drawing a line of how far a society can intrude a person’s affairs.
Ability of others to access and link databases, with few control on how they use, share or exploit the information, makes individual control over information about oneself difficult. Privacy in cyberspace is the most flagrantly violated right of the individual. It has multiple dimensions, including privacy of the physical person, privacy of personal behaviour, privacy of communications and privacy of personal data. The last two are commonly bundled together as ‘information privacy.
Internet offers many benefits. Web sites provide a vast world of information, entertainment, and shopping at our fingerprints. Electronic mails, instant messaging, and chat rooms enable us to communicate with friends, family, and strangers in ways we never dreamed of a decade before. The internet has become an indispensable tool for data retrieval, communication, and business transactions. Companies increasingly look to the internet to attract potential clients and customers and to stay in contact with current clients and customers. But with the ease in collecting and processing information, there exists the danger that Internet Business transactions can render party’s information susceptible to interception, misappropriation, or even loss. Internet exposes Companies to the danger that third parties may access private, confidential client data, resulting in potential liability to those companies. The privacy and security concerns generated by its usage increase the importance of a company’s privacy policy.6 Internet privacy involves the right or mandate of personal privacy concerning the storing, repurposing, provision to third parties, and displaying of information pertaining to oneself via the Internet. Internet privacy is a subset of data privacy. Privacy concerns have been articulated from the beginnings of large-scale computer sharing.
Companies are hired to watch what websites people visit, and then use that information, for instance by sending advertising popups based on one’s web browsing history. There are many ways in which people can divulge their personal information, for instance by use of “social media” and by sending bank and credit card information to various websites. Moreover, directly observed behaviour, such as browsing logs, search queries, or contents of the Facebook profile can be automatically processed to infer potentially more intrusive details about an individual, such as sexual orientation, political and religious views, race, substance use, intelligence, and personality.9 Several social networking websites try to protect the personal information of their subscribers. On Facebook, for example, privacy settings are available to all registered users: they can block certain individuals from seeing their profile, they can choose their “friends”, and they can limit who has access to one’s pictures and videos. Privacy settings are also available on other social networking websites such as Google Plus, Twitter etc. The user can apply such settings when providing personal information on the internet.
The importance of right to privacy for the maintenance of dignity and integrity of an individual is beyond explanation. The legislative measures are adopted in India in this regard though seem to be enough on paper but when it comes to implementation, lack of awareness amongst the users, the internet habits of the users in India and lack of expertise amongst the enforcement agencies are presenting serious challenges.
Aishwarya Says:
I have always been against Glorifying Over Work and therefore, in the year 2021, I have decided to launch this campaign “Balancing Life”and talk about this wrong practice, that we have been following since last few years. I will be talking to and interviewing around 1 lakh people in the coming 2021 and publish their interview regarding their opinion on glamourising Over Work.
If you are interested in participating in the same, do let me know.
Do follow me on Facebook, Twitter Youtube and Instagram.
The copyright of this Article belongs exclusively to Ms. Aishwarya Sandeep. Reproduction of the same, without permission will amount to Copyright Infringement. Appropriate Legal Action under the Indian Laws will be taken.
If you would also like to contribute to my website, then do share your articles or poems at adv.aishwaryasandeep@gmail.com
We also have a Facebook Group Restarter Moms for Mothers or Women who would like to rejoin their careers post a career break or women who are enterpreneurs.
We are also running a series Inspirational Women from January 2021 to March 31,2021, featuring around 1000 stories about Indian Women, who changed the world. #choosetochallenge