Self- Improving Security and Privacy

Griffith, Eric. “How to Reclaim Your Online Privacy,” PC Magazine,Vol. 28: (2-4). Feb. 1, 2009. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. April 4, 2011.

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Although we make think that we may not have much privacy online, Eric Griffith thinks a bit differently, “While it's easy to give up, it's also easier than ever to take back your privacy.” In this article, Eric Griffith takes the helpful and informative approach to addressing an issue on every internet user’s mind: privacy. Griffith goes into great detail and gives strategies that can help people with “secretive surfing”. He attempts to address all internet users by including ways to be private while using the four most popular internet browsers; Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. He takes the point of view of informing people with little to no experience on computers, and he gives them a variety of different ways to keep their internet surfing relatively private. Some of these ways involve: altering cookie settings, deleting history, not giving email or any personal information to certain sites, Anonymous personal proxy setup, encrypted email usage, and ways to secure your instant messaging. Overall, Griffith conveys a message of urgency to all internet users to take responsibility in their own hands to become more private and cautious while online. He does this by not only providing useful information to help his audience do this, but by also giving examples of things that could go wrong if these precautions aren’t taken.

Griffith’s article addresses the research question at hand from a new perspective in the sense that it is calling for taking responsibility of cyber protection into our own hands as citizens. As the research question suggests, government interference for protecting its citizen’s safety online, would in turn result in citizens being completely policed by government officials. However, Griffith takes the interesting approach of urging internet users to protect themselves, thus improving privacy. After reading this article the audience is more prepared to answer the question of what to do about cyber threats because this article brings in the new perspective that calls for each internet user to take certain precautions to protect themselves. If internet users have the capability to protect themselves, it certainly seems like a win-win situation as far as my research question goes. Protection from cyber espionage, viruses, and identity theft would be among the things protected, and privacy in general will be preserved. Also, by providing specific examples of the dangers of surfing the internet without any precautions, Griffith also brings more attention the research question by making it seem even more significant to the well-being of our country and every internet using citizen.