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Faculty Mentor

Subrata Acharya

Abstract

The tremendous growth in information technology and the use of digital communication medium have led to serious concerns on preserving and reclaiming privacy of users online [1]. Many individuals consider privacy to be a right, but much or all of their online activity can be and is easily tracked by various organizations. Additionally, due to the lack of effective regulations, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are lured to collect and disseminate user specific privacy and profile information for financial gains. In recent times, the strongest effort by the federal government towards addressing this concern was specified in the Freedom of Information Act and Privacy Act [2]. The Act provided guidelines and mechanisms to access, store and transmit individual personal information online. But, in-spite of various recent efforts there are huge lapses in online privacy, with very little accountability to identify and address the problem. The goal of this research and the experimental studies conducted is to demonstrate how information can still be leaked in the current Internet usage and the steps that end-users (clients) can take to mitigate the problem. The research also discusses numerous approaches and tools that can be readily implemented to help bring back privacy to online browsing.

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