Privacy Paradox: Privacy Issues on the Internet

Abstract

nitially, the Internet provided personal anonymity because users’ actions online had no actual connection to their real life. As technologies developed, new opportunities required users to provide their personal data, which led to digital information being directly related to real people. However, some users failed to adapt to the new functional Internet content: they keep treating it as anonymous environment. Even being aware of the potential threat, they make no attempts to protect their private life data, the phenomenon defined as the privacy paradox. It is a popular research subject in social studies and economics; however, the privacy paradox remains understudied by law scientists. The author studied the status of anonymity on the Internet as either a mandatory content of the right to privacy, or a phenomenon requiring restriction in order to protect the rights and legitimate interests of citizens and the state security. The article contains some proposals for establishing the normative balance between anonymity and the right to privacy on the Internet.

Keywords

• right
• confidentiality
• anonymity
• digitalization
• privacy paradox
• social networks
• internet
• authentication methods
• data leakage