No Right to be Forgotton on the Internet

Anyone, who publicly posts statements on the Internet that are intended for the general public cannot assert a right to be forgotten afterwards. However, should the Internet “learn” to forget, when the term “digital eraser” was chosen as non-word of the year several months ago? Even if a forced deletion of information would restrict communication, transparency, and the availability of information?

The question whether there is a right to be forgotten on the Internet will now soon be brought before the courts in the EU. The European Court of Justice will hear the case of a Spanish man who urges Google to erase his name from its search index. A controversial topic in which the Google’s position is clear: The search engine giant does not consider itself responsible for negative or inappropriate information from a person’s past and, therefore, won’t delete it from the Internet. Google sees itself as host of information, not controller or publisher.

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Full privacy only exists offline

Is there anything like privacy on the Internet or does it only exist offline? The Big Players on the net have already made their points regarding this topic. Randi Zuckerberg, sister of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, made the now famous statement that anonymity on the Internet has to disappear. And Facebook has just recently won an important victory in this fight against anonymity on the net.

Even Google manager Eric Schmidt has clearly positioned himself about privacy on the Internet:

“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

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The most serious Internet threats in 2013

Today the Safer Internet Day 2013 is taking place. It is the tenth edition of the event that pays attention to threats on the Internet. The aim of the EU-launched day is to make the Internet a safer place especially for children and teenagers.

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This year the Federal Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media, BITKOM, has listed ten of the most serious Internet threats:

  1. Drive-by-Downloads of malware
  2. Trojans / Worms
  3. Attacks on databases and websites
  4. Virus kits
  5. Botnets
  6. Denial-of-Service-attacks
  7. Phishing
  8. Data loss
  9. Rogueware/ Scareware
  10. Spam

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