Internet Censoring

The Internet can provide anyone with almost unlimited information, because of this it is sometimes referred to as the “information superhighway”. Internet censorship limits and even stops the flow of information. Web censoring goes on for many reasons and is used by many different organizations. Some governments use it to limit what their citizens have access too, while schools might uses Internet filters to limit what their students access using school computers. Private companies may limit Internet to try to keep their employees on task. The programs which block the websites are usually called Web Filters and they come in all shapes and sizes. Some are made for the parent wanting to limit what their child sees on the Internet, while others are massive and created for blocking a website from a whole nation of people. An example of a larger massive firewall is commonly called the Great Firewall of China. Other nations like Cuba force citizens to use a public access to browse the Internet. There are now many groups like the OpenNet Initiative that support and inform people about Internet Censoring. Other organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union push governments, through politics, to keep the Internet uncensored.

Through the use of embedding content in websites private companies have the ability to track a person’s movements on the Internet. A prime example of a company with this ability is Facebook. Every time you see Facebook’s “like” button on a website, and sometimes even your name or profile picture from Facebook, that web site had to get that information from Facebook. Facebook sent the site the information which then displayed it to you. When Facebook sent the information, your name and the website it was sent to was more than likely logged somewhere on one of Facebook’s servers. On top of this Facebook never asked you if it was ok to share this information (they probably have a clause in their terms of service that allows this). Sending your name to the website also makes it possible for that site that is receiving the information to find out exactly who is visiting their website. Websites previously would have to go through much more difficult channels to get the name of those on their websites.   Although they publicly deny taking actions like this, their having the ability to do track people through the Internet is an enough for some people to take this on as a serious privacy concern.