My Space and Yours

Take a cursory look at your lifestyle in the contemporary world, and it is highly likely that the internet, email, computers, laptops, iPods and the likes will feature very high on your priority list. Stop for a moment, and reflect on how much of yourself you have revealed to the cyber world. Your correspondence, for example, is saved in your email inbox; your profile is up on various social networking websites and your professional information is present on your company’s website. If anyone were to Google you, they would probably be able to compile an entire dossier on you. And just imagine the use s/he could make of the information.

In such a scenario, organisations like Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) play an important role and the official website of the EFF is definitely worth a visit and a good read. This organisation was formed to protect your digital rights in cyberspace including the right to privacy and free speech. Privacy, of course, is one concern most of the netizens face, and hence, this website can provide you with the much-needed information on where privacy has been compromised, and what has been done about it.

Depending on your interest, you can skim through the basic information of EFF in the beginning, browsing its history to find out how it came into being, its aims and objectives, and the people behind it. EFF was the organisation that was subtly criticised in Dan Brown’s Digital Fortress, so just for curiosity’s sake, you may want to learn more about it.

The ‘Our work’ section will give you an in-depth insight into the issues that the EFF deals with. Some of these issues include free speech, intellectual property rights, privacy and innovation. Each of these broad categories are further divided so that under the head of privacy comes the sub-issues of anonymity, cell phone tracking, search engine logs and so on.

Within each section, you will find real-life cases where EFF has stepped in to protect individuals. Apart from reading about the details of these cases, you can also find out how you can prevent yourself from getting into a similar kafuffle.

Then, there is the Deeplinks blog, where you can read news stories from around the internet world pertaining to the use and abuse of information as well as the safeguard and breach of digital rights. The EFF press releases are also available in the Press Room section.

And finally, the ‘Take action’ section motivates you in taking action to protect yourself and your information from spying eyes. Some of the information is specific to the laws in the US, but there is no reason why you cannot read about what is going on to keep yourself aware. There is a special section for bloggers, where they can download the EFF guide on safe blogging, and advice on what to do if confronted with a legal notice on something you have written on your blog.

At the end of the day, it would do well to remember that information in cyberspace is never safe. It is always a good idea to limit that information to yourself. Strictly keep your photographs, contact numbers and similar information away from social networking websites. Try to have in-person meetings if you want to exchange sensitive information, rather than use email or instant messaging. Organisations like EFF can only do so much to safeguard privacy — most of the effort in this regard has to be initiated at an individual level.

To discover the various threats to your privacy in cyberspace, log onto http://www.eff.org