Divulging the trade secrets of another on the Internet without authority to do so may also result in liability. Viewing the matter from the other direction, one must be careful in placing his or her own copyrighted material and confidential information on the Internet. It is important to exercise suitable precautions in determining what will be placed on the Internet and to what extent the information will be exposed to others. For example, a limited e-mail dissemination is very different from disseminating the information through a home page on the World Wide Web. Another very important consideration on the Internet is security.
People often assume that Internet communications provide a high level of security.
This is not necessarily so. Internet security should be considered no greater than that of a cellular phone and, perhaps, no more secure than a postcard going through the mail. Information traveling on the Internet travels in a series of packets. There are electronic eavesdropping devices such as those known as packet sniffers by which knowledgeable computer hackers can seize sequential packets of information at an MTA and reconstruct a document. One obvious security measure is to limit the access of users within a given organization by requiring a suitable log-in name and password.