Welcome to the E-Privacy website created in December 2006 by students of the European School 3 of Brussels, Belgium, and Hot Springs Middle School, Arkansas, USA.

First, what is E-Privacy? We have searched on the Internet for a definition and were not able to find one! We feel this gives us some freedom to make our own definition. We assume that the 'E' refers to Electronics and thus propose the following definition:

E-Privacy is privacy in the electronic age. Privacy is threatened by electronic devices such as the Internet, mobile phones etc.

Privacy has been defined as the right of individuals to determine for themselves when, how and to what extent information about themselves is communicated to others.

If you accept the above definitions then you have to accept that 'e-privacy' covers a wide range of topics including, for example, email, social networking and blog sites, closed circuit television (CCTV) surveillance, phone tapping, hacking, camera phones etc etc. For the purposes of this competition entry we are asked to focus on privacy issues relating to social networking sites but we feel that a project on e-privacy would not be complete without some coverage of these other topics.

To address the problem of e-privacy, our schools have:

•  jointly conceived a survey which has been distributed to more than 150 students
•  analysed the results of the survey
•  done research on various aspects of e-privacy
•  created this website are which reports on the results of the survey, gives information on e-privacy, and contains forums for discussion on various aspects of e-privacy.

We feel that our privacy is threatened by the use (abuse?) of electronic systems in five main ways:

•  the dissemination of information about me by myself or with my permission (for example, I might choose to put my phone number on my website, which is probably unwise but at least my own decision)
•  dissemination of information about me without my permission (for example, the friend who takes a picture of me at the beach and then puts that on his/her website without my permission, or the online store that sells information collected about me to other companies)
•   the more-or-less legal activities of businesses seeking to make commercial gain (for example the use of cookies to track the spending habits of an Internet shopper)
•  the more-or-less legal activities of law-enforcement agencies, especially to assist them in the war against terror (since 9/11). This is the 'big brother' side of the e-privacy issue.
•  criminal activities (computer crimes involving the harvesting of credit card numbers, for example)

We asked our students to reflect on aspects of the e-privacy issue, and to add comments to the discussions on this website according to certain instructions. Particularly intelligent and/or interesting messages (as determined by the webmasters) were given the prestigious 'megabrain' award.

Please follow one of the links at the left of this page to see pages created by our students. Be sure to explore this site thoroughly - don't forget - WE'RE WATCHING YOU...