If every time you walked into a shop your movements were recorded and analysed, your time of visit logged and an assistant asked about your personal interests and buying habits, you would probably be taken aback. However, this may happen without your knowledge every time you visit a website. It's not in the name of Big Brother, but of 21st-century capitalism.
Data-mining tools are in vogue in the commercial world as corporations try to collate and assemble all the information they can about consumers. By mining this information they can build consumer profiles and try to predict what they will want, or want to do, next. While the open sale of this information has met opposition, the development of detailed profiles of consumers using the Internet is already a reality.
An excessive amount of hype has accompanied much of the coverage of privacy and trust issues on the Web, perhaps because there's a lack of information about the extent to which people can be monitored. David Bolger, technical director of Entropy, says that some companies which run websites use cookies to collect statistics on users' personal preferences, behaviour and the sites they visit.
Not only that, but if you decide to fill out an information form about yourself for a website, this information is stored on a cookie. When you visit other sites, they in turn scan the existing cookies on your computer. So, the information you gave at one site can be accessed and utilised by another company without your knowledge, according to Bolger.
The hype surrounding such issues could be a reaction to the lack of analysis of the downsides of the Internet. Initially, only the benefits were emphasised, not the drawbacks.
While most of our e-mail may not be of interest to people who would go to the trouble of intercepting it, the increasing commerciality of the Internet means that, for many, the stakes are high.
People are communicating more and more in the course of their work. As a result, larger amounts of commercially sensitive information is moving across public networks and the potential gains from accessing this are quite large. While the majority of hacking and mischief may originate with teenagers with more computer skills and time on their hands than sense, the reality is that organised "shadowy" activity is a daily occurrence on the Internet. The fact that Microsoft was hacked into and had blueprints of some of its new products accessed is a sign that industrial espionage is alive and well on the Web, but according to David Bolger, it is impossible to quantify the scale of activity.
Commercial espionage on the Internet is known to be quite widespread, with all of the major world powers and industrial nations having an information warfare division. This includes a dedicated team of hackers whose sole purpose is to obtain politically and economically sensitive information covertly.
Stolen data, which could contain sensitive high-tech or industrial information, could give a particular country a distinct advantage. Robert Schifreen, once Britain's best-known hacker, says there is a lot of money to be made out of commercially sensitive information stolen through hacking. He says companies use hackers to break into a competitor's system to see what technology or strategy they are developing.
Schifreen says it is not unknown for a company to hack into a takeover target to assess the real condition of the company.
It is essential for people to realise how they are monitored when they surf the Internet. With browsers adding wider functionality, and more extensive use of Java, holes are constantly appearing in software. Sean Reynolds, technical director of Irish Internet security company RITS, says even though there is a lot of hype about security and privacy concerns, these threats are real. The problem is that people do not know how much their privacy is being compromised.
He says a bug in a recent version of Netscape's browser allowed a website, when a user logged on to it, to access everything on the user's computers and the internal network they were connected to.
A lot of sites require you to give information about yourself, before accessing information. They can often sell this on to marketing companies or the marketing departments of large corporations. Reynolds says it can often be very difficult to find the box to untick which allows companies to sell on information. Users should check for such disclaimers and make sure that a site is SSL encrypted before giving any information to a site. One of the ways to stop monitoring is to disable the cookies on your browser, but if you do this, many websites will not allow you to use their full range of functions.
The most damaging potential of the holding and selling on of personal information, apart from the obvious invasion of privacy, is swapping of information between different sectors and between different databases of demographic information, medical and credit history. For example, a medical site passing on your records to an insurance company or bank could affect your eligibility for a loan or push up your insurance premiums. Likewise, if a recruitment company found out that you had past medical, psychological or psychiatric problems, it might effect your candidacy for the job.
Director of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, Donncha O'Connell, says there should be a comprehensive regulatory framework regarding the development of the Internet. He says the council is not anti-technology but would strive for an appropriate balance to be struck between people's right to privacy and the development and operation of new technologies. The council is currently establishing a working group on cyber rights to address how people will be affected by technological advances. The use of personal firewalls which can be downloaded free from sites such as zonalarm.com can make a difference.
Reynolds says the firewall will block any website or outside client access to information on a person's computer or network. The firewall will also make users aware of what requests are being made for information when they are at each site. By acting as a phantom terminal, the firewall will make it appear to websites that cookies are being accepted when they are not.
If a war is being waged on the Internet then, like all wars, it is producing large profits for companies who are supplying the weapons in the conflict. As soon as a new virus appears, a new fix is needed; as soon as one system of security is broken, a new system is needed. Once a new monitoring product comes onto the market - hey presto! - a new product to protect our privacy is the natural result.
People's right to privacy is at stake on the Web and perhaps the issue is not whether an organisation would want to look at your mail but that they can - without your permission. Techno fear may be in vogue at the moment, but the openness that is at once the main strength of the Internet is also its weakness and this has to be recognised. If there is a conspiracy, it is one of silence, with many Internet users not being made aware by the websites they visit that they are under surveillance.