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Nearly everyone will at some stage in their lives use the Internet. Very minimal skills are needed to use the Internet, and it allows people to access an immense amount of information at the touch of a button. All a person with a little hacking knowledge needs to do to get such information is to use a Trojan horse type program and he or she can follow you around and view the information you are uploading or downloading. .
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. .
Another factor in this privacy issue are the "cookies" sent to you when viewing certain web sites. A cookie is a piece of information that is sent to you by a web site and in return, it takes a piece of information from the user. People can actually stop "cookies" from being received but it prevents vital information from being sent to them. Some times, all the cookie does is record, on the users computer, without consent, information such as the number of times that the site has been accessed by the user. More sophisticated versions can access information from the user such as e-mail addresses or the real name of the user. Such information should not be allowed to be accessed without consent and such practices should be stopped.