Ways to Protect Your Privacy on the Internet - Your Privacy Counts

There are loads of ways you can protect your privacy on the internet and I hope dear reader to show you a few. But I think perhaps some background that is possibly to blame for my indignant paranoia and my problem with the presumption that people should be snooped on - just in case.

Now we all know that the internet is the most awesome communication medium that the world has ever seen - it has literally brought a whole world that much closer together. I have met friends in place I probably would never have ever visited or even heard of thanks to the internet but of course it has been used for communicating between the zealots, fanatics, criminals and well everyone!

I do not think it is sufficient justification for the erosion of privacy, freedom of speech and blatant spying on the 99.99999% of the population to catch the one or two ne'er-do-wells that may be prosecuted for the violation of our civil liberties. I suggest if you feel like me that you should read the article below from the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation).

Well that's my rather unscientific rant over and now I would like to show you a few ways to protect your privacy on internet. I'm afraid you can't completely protect your privacy without spending a few bucks but there are some simple free ways to stop those snoopers.

1) Get a separate email address for your personal email - don't use this to subscribe, get information or any other stuff intended to sell you rubbish.

2) Tell, teach and order your kids not to give out personal information out on the internet. Make it fun - create an anonymous persona they can use

3) Clear your cache - after you've surfed the web your browser stores images, pages and information on each page visited. Delete these after each visit especially on public, or company machines. It's usually called - clear history, clear cache or similar and found in Tools/Options./Preferences or very similar.

4) Don't use Free anonymous proxies to protect your privacy. All you're doing is relaying all your information through a server you know nothing about.

5)Always run a firewall and keep your computer up to date with security patches, it makes your computer much harder to break into.

6)If an email looks suspicious delete it. Never open attachments unless you are sure of the sender.

7) Always keep your antivirus software up to date.

Keep your identity secure on the internet. Be careful how much personal information you post on social network sites or blogs, think before you put too much

Never ever reply to spam emails, all you are doing is confirming they've found a real address.
Just remember anything you post on the internet is not private and will stay there.

There is a fine line between enjoying and interacting on the internet, the problem is that people don't think about what information they are giving away on the internet.

Identity thieves can glean lots of information from an avid Facebook user for example, it's surprisingly easy to get a decent photograph, some background information, place of work, home address and date of birth from the internet for millions of people. That is a great start for impersonating someone and stealing their identity, how many people use their date of birth as a PIN or a password for example?

Your information is private and law abiding people should not be spied upon - read the article 'Freedom not Fear' from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

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Comments

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 at 2:41 PM, by William
I couldn't agree with you more. There are a number of really good software based proxies out there. I've tried Anonimyzer and another anonymous proxy, Private Proxy. Both work great.

Free proxies are dangerous. You never know who is running the server. The people behind the free proxy could be the very people you don't want accessing your data.

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