Maintaining your privacy, protecting your
email address and personal information while using the
Internet is something that needs to worked at for you to remain as anonymous
as possible and prevent spam mail.
There are actually 3 separate issues to
think about:
Email, web surfing and program installs:
EMAIL
Your email address gets out in several (sneaky...) ways.
- Someone has access to your computer and is actually
visiting porn sites. Know what is being viewed on your
computer.
- Sometimes a disreputable website runs a program
that even by simply clicking OK to enter the website it can gather your email
address. NEVER automatically click OK on any popup screen. Read
More
- If you have ever joined a mailing list
- If anyone has ever sent you an email greeting card
or you send one to someone else
- If you have ever replied to a spam email asking to
be removed
- One of your friends OR you yourself... sends
forwards of forwards of email jokes etc (this sends everyone's email
address to who knows how many people by the time everyone forwards it
several times. Eventually the email falls into someone's hands that
gathers email addresses)
- If you have ever visited a website that asks for
your email address for any reason
There are other ways but these are the most common.
Never give out your email address unless you know who
you are giving it to. Remember...Just because a website asks for your
email address, you don't have to give it to them. OR if it
is required for a download or to gain access to a particular page, You won't
get arrested if you make one up!
Don't just forward email jokes, letters etc.
Send all of your mail as a "clean" message WITHOUT all the other
email addresses left on it.
Use "Copy and Paste" or actually write your
own message...encourage those that forward mail to you to do the same!
Web Surfing
Website "Cookies" are small bits of text
downloaded and stored on your computer. They don't take up much space
and cause no damage. They are both good and bad.
There are two kinds of cookies. A session cookie is a line of text
that is stored temporarily in your computer's RAM. Because a session
cookie is never written to a drive, it is destroyed as soon as you close your
browser.
If you are shopping on a website, most shopping cart
programs use cookies to keep track of what you purchase. . These are Temporary Cookies.
A persistent cookie is a more permanent line of text that gets saved
by your browser to a file on your hard drive.
They are also
often used to "remember" you if you are returning to a website you
visit often and have to log into.
Persistent Cookies are also used to track you from site to site
recording your surfing habits. I consider most of these the "bad"
ones. This type of cookie use will eventually allow advertisers to
"target" the ads that show up on a lot of sites.
Example. Say you look at several dog type websites. Pretty soon
you will start to see ads that offer dog related products no matter what site
you are currently viewing. These cookies can also track and record your
browsing habits... These are persistent
Cookies
Read the "Privacy Policy" statement for any
website that asks for your email address or ANY personal information, see just what they are going to do
with it. Know what user information they gather and how they intend to
use it.
Internet Explorer (6.0 and higher) allows the
user to switch off cookies or to only allow sites you specify to place them on
your computer.
NEVER
give out ANY personal information to anyone unless you are SURE of what it is
going to be used for!
Program Installation
Some software also installs what is
called "spyware" known by many names--Adware, trackware, or
even Big Brotherware on unsuspecting users computers.
While producers of these type of program claim its
purpose is merely to collect information about Internet habits in order to
deliver ads tailored to a surfer's interests, privacy advocates are concerned
about the potential misuse of this data.
Where does it come from? Most likely it
was installed alongside that cute, free software program your friend told you
about, that you downloaded just
last week without you even noticing. This is usually done when you
download "Freeware" but some reputable software makers also
use these programs.
There is a program that you can get
(free) that will scan your computer, alert and or remove this spyware from
your computer for you Click
Here ( I use this program myself..)
Download and read the Help file prior to
downloading and installing the program.
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