Privacy Pirates: 7 Ways to Hide
You're being watched.
Every time you open a web browser, someone -- maybe hundreds and people and corporations -- start silently tracking your every move. The tracking is so detailed that the web site you are viewing is likely to know your age; your income; your address, as well as the types of things you like to do and buy -- just from your computer's IP address, according to a series of shocking investigative reports in the Wall Street Journal. Worse, the site you just left is likely to keep tracking you as you continue to browse the web.
The Journal series comes hard on the heels of an MSNBC story about a hacker, who picked up information on 100 million Facebook accounts and posted it online. The hacker bragged that his move prevents these individuals from ever securing their personal data, regardless of their privacy settings, which can now be downloaded and sorted or stored.
Why is everyone watching you? It's all about advertising. The more a web site can find out about you, the more valuable that information is to advertisers who want to sell you everything from music to vacations. The notion is that by tracking your every move, advertisers will be able to send you a coupon for donuts just as the aroma begins to waft your direction as you walk by the store, vastly increasing the chance that you'll succumb. The more they know about you, the more they can try to control your actions, from where you go on vacation to what you buy when you're there.
So, even if Dictionary.com has nothing to sell you, they can make big money by selling information about you. Google's CEO recently said that we all can kiss anonymity goodbye.
What do you do if you don't want to be watched? Can you hide from the privacy pirates? The answer is a qualified "yes." But first you should figure out if you ever want to go incognito; if you want to hide all the time or just sometimes.
Rebecca Jeschke, who works for the Electronic Frontier Association, says her foundation has published an exhaustive treatise on how you can go off the grid and thwart those who are trying to track you. The site also has a demonstration project that allows you to secure your communication with a handful of sites. But she admits that she appreciates Amazon.com's product suggestions that she wouldn't get if she always searched surreptitiously denying the site the ability to place cookies on her computer.
But as the Journal series explains things may have gone so far that you'd be wise to consider securing your privacy at least part of the time.
"There are no rules for privacy sharing right now," said Justin Brookman, senior fellow with the Center for Democracy and Technology. "If a web site can share your information with one partner, apparently they can share with 1,000."
How can you hide? Here are seven tips.
Set your settings: If you want to do a web search without being tracked, you can set your search for "private" or "incognito" browsing. With Internet Explorer or Firefox, you can do that by going into "tools" and setting the preference to "private." With Chrome, hit: Control, Shift N. A page will come up saying "You have gone incognito" and explain what that means. The catch: This privacy setting must be turned on every time you want a private search.
Plug-in privacy: A free product called Abine automatically turns on privacy settings every time you search, but it does not work with all web browsers, including Google's Chrome.
Disconnect: If you have a late-model cell phone, it's also tracking you with a GPS device. If you don't want to leave a trail of where you are now and everywhere you've been, turn it off when it's not in use.
Check your profile: If you search the web, you're likely to already have a profile on Google that says what products you're interested in -- pets, crafts, etc. To check it, go to Google.com/ads/preferences. If you don't want to have the advertisements you see on every site to be affected by these preferences, opt out. Google has a nice little video explaining how.
Don't enter: Want to win a trip to Hawaii? A free dinner at your favorite restaurant? An iPad? When you toss your business card into the bowl or fill out a form, the information you provide is likely to be collected and resold, said Chris Jay Hoofnagle, a privacy expert and lecturer at Berkeley Law School.
Skip registration: If you bought a new refrigerator, computer or camera, the manufacturer is likely to ask you to register the device. Their pitch is that registration will allow them to provide a warranty (as promised), giving you the assurance that if the product breaks in the first year or two, you can have it replaced. In reality, that registration is likely to go directly to a marketing firm rather than the manufacturer. You don't need to register and provide this private information to be covered under the warranty. But save your receipt.
Opt out: You can take yourself off of direct marketing lists, which get you reams of credit offers and advertisements, by calling 1-888-5-OPT-OUT. This service will ask for private information, such as your Social Security number and you must provide it to opt out. However, you'll know that the service is legitimate by calling from your home phone. That will allow the site to tell you who you are and where you live before you tell it anything else (which is, admittedly, a little scary too).
Finally, you should understand that you are likely to be your own worst enemy when it comes to keeping information private, said Chris Jay Hoofnagle, a privacy expert and lecturer at Berkeley Law School.
"We are constantly reacting to the impulse to get the free thing," whether that's web site content or a free dinner or vacation sweepstakes, he said. "You need to be skeptical of things that are free because the price is personal information."
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