Every now and then, you hear voices fighting to maintain Internet privacy. They want the Internet to remain private. Well, it’s either that these guys know nothing about the Internet or they completely misinterpret the term Internet Privacy, because technically, there is nothing private about the Internet.

Let me explain. When you visit a website, any website, your traffic goes to your ISP and then is transmitted across different servers before it eventually reaches the target website. Now, during the process, at least your ISP and the target website record the details of your visit. And, although the target website doesn’t know exactly who you are, your ISP does.

Even if you use VPN to ensure your privacy, you really don’t have full privacy. If you don’t believe that, then ask any system administrator about this (he’ll tell you the harsh truth).

But why do people want to be anonymous when they are surfing the Internet anyway? Is it because…

• …they are saying/doing obscene things that they don’t want anyone to know about?

• …they are members of an online army (these people typically write comments on news article/blogs and they pretend they’re Americans, and then they ask each other to like their comments)?

• …they engage in other illegal/shameful activities?

I can’t think of a single legitimate instance where one actually needs to browse the Internet anonymously.

I think it’s time for people to accept that there is no such thing as Internet privacy and to start acting responsibly when using the Internet. Hopefully that day will come when people must login with their real IDs to do anything on the Internet.

This article (as well as all other articles on this website) is an intellectual property and copyright of Fadi El-Eter and can only appear on fadi.el-eter.com.