Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude them or information about themselves and thereby reveal them 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. When something is private to a person, it usually means there is something within them that is considered inherently special or personally sensitive. The degree to which private information is exposed therefore depends on how the public will receive this information, which differs between places and over time (http://en.wikipedia.org).

            During our short discussions we had discussed the five different types of privacy in our Ethics subject as follows, Identity theft, customer profiling,

          

  Identity theft is a crime in which an imposter obtains key pieces of personal information, such as Social Security or driver's license numbers, in order to impersonate someone else. The information can be used to obtain credit, merchandise, and services in the name of the victim, or to provide the thief with false credentials. In addition to running up debt, an imposter might provide false identification to police, creating a criminal record or leaving outstanding arrest warrants for the person whose identity has been stolen. Identity theft is categorized in two ways: true name and account takeover. True name identity theft means that the thief uses personal information to open new accounts. The thief might open a new credit card account, establish cellular phone service, or open a new checking account in order to obtain blank checks. Account takeover identity theft means the imposter uses personal information to gain access to the person's existing accounts. Typically, the thief will change the mailing address on an account and run up a huge bill before the person whose identity has been stolen realizes there is a problem. The Internet has made it easier for an identity thief to use the information they've stolen because transactions can be made without any personal interaction. Although an identity thief might crack into a database to obtain personal information, experts say it's more likely the thief would obtain information by using old-fashioned methods. Retrieving personal paperwork and discarded mail from trash dumpsters dumpster diving is one of the easiest ways for an identity thief to get information. Another popular method to get information is shoulder surfing - the identity thief simply stands next to someone at a public office, such the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, and watches as the person fills out personal information on a form.

To prevent identity theft, experts recommend that you regularly check your credit report with major credit bureaus, follow up with creditors if your bills do not arrive on time, destroy unsolicited credit applications, and protect yourself by not giving out any personal information in response to unsolicited e-mail (http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com).

           This is the few types of Identity theft.

1.    Financial Identity Theft

2.    Insurance Identity Theft

3.    Medical Identity Theft

4.    Criminal Identity Theft

5.    Driver’s License Identity Theft

6.    Social Security Identity Theft

7.    Synthetic Identity Theft

8.    Child Identity Theft

Consumer Profiling is a description of a customer group or type of customer based on various demographic, psycho graphic and/or geographic characteristics; also called shopper profile. For example, magazine advertising salespeople provide advertisers with customer profiles describing the type of person who will be exposed to advertisements in that magazine. The description may include income, occupation, and level of education, age, gender, hobbies, or area of residence. Customer profiles provide the knowledge needed to select the best prospect lists and to enable advertisers to select the best media.

Companies openly collect personal information about Internet users by the use of cookies; it is text files that a Web site puts on a user’s hard drive so that it can remember the information later. Tracking software similar methods used outside the Web Environment. Databases contain a huge amount of a consumer behavioral data.

Affiliated Websites it is a Group of Web sites served by a single advertising network, customized service for each consumer.

Types of data collected while surfing the Web:

-      GET data

-      POST data

-      Click-stream data

There are four ways to limit or even stop the deposit of cookies on hard drives.

–        Set the browser to limit or stop cookies

–        Manually delete them from the hard drive

–        Download and install a cookie-management program

–        Use anonymous browsing programs that don’t accept cookies

Treating Consumer Data Responsibly strong measures are required to avoid customer relationship problems. The Chief privacy Officer (CPO) is the one who oversee data privacy policies and initiatives.

Employers monitor workers ensures that corporate IT usage policy is followed. Fourth Amendment cannot be used to limit how a private employer treats its employees public-sector employees have far greater privacy rights than in the private industry. Privacy advocates want federal legislation to keeps employers from infringing upon privacy rights of employees. Example of this is spamming; transmission of the same e-mail message to a large number of people, extremely inexpensive method of marketing, used by many legitimate organizations, Can contain unwanted and objectionable materials

Employee monitoring in the workplace should be expected but the lack of laws and legislation mean workers' privacy is at risk. As such, there should be clear, written policies to identify the parameters of monitoring by employers to prevent intruding into people's private affairs, observers suggest.

Advanced Surveillance Technology is use also to monitor their employees if they do their work properly and if they follow the rules of the company.

Surveillance Technologies has distinguished itself from other security companies by specializing in providing top of the line digital recording surveillance systems that allow business to remotely manage their facilities from anywhere around the world.

            Three main types of Advanced Surveillance Technology that used by most of rich countries

-      Camera surveillance - U.S. cities plan to expand surveillance systems “Smart surveillance system”

-      Facial recognition software - identifies criminal suspects and other undesirable characters, yields mixed results

-      Global Positioning System (GPS) chips - Placed in many devices, Precisely locate users

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