Privacy and Trust

Abstract

In this age of computers, the Internet, and massive data bases that never lose or forget anything, it is no wonder that we feel we are losing our privacy and we get very concerned about it. The reason for this loss can be found in the phrase “once something is released into the Internet, it can never be completely deleted.” We give away bits and pieces of personal information all the time, but we give them to different entities, at different times, and through different media such as paper or verbally. We therefore expect these pieces of information to disappear or at least to stay separate. The nature of the online world, however, is such that individual pieces of information tend to gravitate toward one another and coalesce into solid objects called personal records.