Internet services and facilities are now used and provided by many companies and individuals worldwide. Each web site that is visited could have the capability of finding out your name and/or e-mail address and sending junk e-mail or cataloguing this information and then selling it to other companies. The ISP that you connect to the internet also has a record of every bit of information you upload or download, and must keep records for official purposes. Any sites that ask for your credit card number for "pay by use" or restricted services could, in fa

Computer Privacy is a major issue and it does effect anyone who uses any internet service. Something must be done to stop the crimes committed against the privacy of people and people should be allowed to control their personal or confidential information, whether they want it freely available or not. Only through consumer pressure will the internet become more secure as has happened in America. Already people can join up to ISP's with totally secure services with total anonymity. This must be the future of the internet.

E-mail viewing without consent is another occurrence of privacy infringement that has led to actual court cases being held to sue people and organisations. The "screening" of e-mail was a large problem before the advent of laws that prevented this from occurring. It was found that one ISP administrator in the United States of America would "get his kicks" out of reading the e-mail sent and received by users of the ISP. His unlawful actions set another precedent and since then this problem, although not altogether gone, has been greatly reduced.

The fact that there is minimal internet privacy has led to people becoming weary of what they actually do on the internet. The people that actually provide the Internet services to uses, ISP's, keep records for up to two months on all user data transactions. This means that someone could possibly get confidential information such as a credit card number and sell the information or use it themselves for purchasing goods or services. This has raised some concern and there have been propositions made in many governments worldwide to ensure that acts such as these are prevented from happening, but, anyone who has access to the actual server could find such information. This practice, however, could never be totally eradicated as there are already statutes in place that demand these records to be kept.

With the release of Microsoft's Windows 97®, a new era of unauthorised data retrieval has arisen. When a user with Windows 97® logs onto The M

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