Privacy

Privacy-Enhanced Personalization by Alfred Kobsa brought up many important issues about privacy on the internet. I think it is important to know what the internet knows about you, but it may also scare you. The internet knows a lot about you whether you want it to or not. It stores a lot of information that you put on websites. Internet users understand that these websites know a lot about them, but it is something that every internet user is aware of when giving information out.

Looking at the three groups of internet users on page 26, I am included in the "privacy unconcerned" group. I am concerned with how much the internet knows about me, but I am not unwilling to provide my information if I want something.  I think it would be interesting to know how much each internet site knows about me, but then again I am not sure if I would really want to know how much they know because they probably have more information than I want them to have. I do not have a problem with releasing information about my basic demographics, hobbies, personal tastes, lifestyle information, or internet behaviors. However, I am less likely to give a site my credit card information and I will only give my social security code if it is something very important and I cannot move on to the next step without giving it. 

One question I have after reading this article is based on the "pseudonymous users and user models" section on page 31; moreover, do you think it is possible to create an anonymous infrastructure that still supports personalization? It would be awesome if this were possible because I do not like giving my e-mail to websites based on the fact that I do not like junk mail. If this were possible it would definitely be something for our generation to take a deeper look at.