Privacy violation and tracking
This part looks at the threats you are going to learn how to guard against throughout the course. During this walkthrough, you will find out about privacy violation and tracking, or the so-called user detection.
Privacy violation
There are a lot of users who confuse privacy and anonymity believing that these notions are either identical or very similar in meaning. In fact, anonymity enables you to visit sites, perform certain actions on web resources, for instance, leave messages without allowing for the possibility of linking your actions with your real identity or location of your connection. Having privacy means that other people, for whom your information is not intended, don’t have access to it.
For instance, you are communicating with someone via an instant messenger, and you are being watched over by agent John. If he attempts to identify you both, he actually performs deanonymization and threatens your anonymity. However, if he reads your correspondence, he violates your privacy by accessing the information confidential between you and your companion and not intended for third parties.
The most frequent privacy violations include viewing correspondence in IM services, accessing emails and eavesdropping on phones. Unfortunately, special services violate the privacy of common Internet users significantly more often than hackers and cybercriminals.
But if special services and law enforcement agencies of your country violate your privacy in the majority of cases, exercising their rights given by the law, the special services of other countries are not entitled to it. But they do, for instance, the email service Yahoo, according to the information leaked into mass media, scanned incoming messages and passed on this information to the US intelligence agency. Following this scandal, Edward Snowden called on everyone to delete their Yahoo accounts, and we wholeheartedly give you the same recommendation.
The correspondence of the Yahoo mail owners was also viewed by hackers who, according to the latest data, compromised three billion accounts of the email service. The actions of Yahoo, US intelligence and hackers blatantly violate user privacy.
There are lesser privacy violations, of course. For instance, email service Gmail was revealed to analyze their users’ emails and use this information to send targeted advertising. This is permitted by the user agreement you accept upon registration.
