Privacy concerns “the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively. The boundaries and content of what is considered private differ among cultures and individuals, but share basic common themes. Privacy is sometimes related to anonymity, the wish to remain unnoticed or unidentified in the public realm.” (Wikipedia, retrieved 18:29, 6 July 2011 (CEST))
Massive use of ICT in business and private life has led to personally identifiable information (PII), i.e. information that can be used to uniquely identify, contact, or locate a single person or can be used with other sources to uniquely identify a single individual (Wikipedia). In addition, the use of social software and in particular social networking applications like Facebook allows to draw quite extensive digital profiles of many people. This situation requires - at least in principle - that persons adopt some kind of strategy to manage this information (Jones, 2008).
Wikipedia's Internet privacy article lists several types of risks to privacy, i.e. HTTP cookies, Flash cookies, Evercookies, Photographs, ernet, Search engines, Data logging, Privacy within social networking sites, and Internet service providers. Some Personal Information Management tools also may touch privacy issues.
For some people, e.g. Dürhager and Heuer (German), Internet privacy is not an issue.
See also: ICT in society, Data protection and privacy rules for research and online identity
End-user tools for web users
Spyware
Such software can just trace browsing activities or be much more intrusive, i.e. record all keystrokes and user interactions on a device.
From Wikipedia
Organizations
Not concerned
Various
Courses