Within the last decade, the Internet has developed as a phenomenon encompassing social, cultural, economic and legal facets. It has become common practice to use the Internet for both the retrieval and provision of information, with the result that the Internet has become a valuable tool in everyday life. Many Internet participants are unaware that they leave data tracks on every website they pass; surfing on the World Wide Web is far from being an anonymous activity of no consequence.

In recent years a number of networking techniques have been initiated in order to accommodate the...