What ever you do online can be tracked.  Even if you are careful, there are still traces that lead back to you.  It does not have to be this way.  You can take control of your privacy.  This graphic shows the dangers of breached privacy on the Internet.

Infographic byWordStream Internet Marketing

Take Control of Your Internet Privacy

Here are  3 simple steps to control your privacy on the Internet:

1. Never post personal information on the Internet.  Once information is on the web, it can be copied and shared without your permission.  Once posted, you’ve lost control over where it can appear.  What may seem harmless can lead to the wrong people having your information.
2. Use an anonymous proxy to hide your IP address.  Your IP address is one identifier that can lead back to you.  By hiding it you can throw would be stalkers off your trail.
3. Clear your cookies.  While normally cookies are not harmful, they do provide information back to websites you visit about your habits on their website.  This may or may not be something you care about.  It depends on the websites you visit.

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No, not the sugary sweet ones. These cookies are much less succulent, and can sometimes be dangerous, and not just for your diet plan. These online cookies are just little pieces of data that a website puts on your computer when you log on. Inside the cookies are strands of information that record various things that you did on the Internet, like what parts of the site you went on, how long you stayed there, and other things about your browsing habits. This information is supposed to be helpful and for the most part it is. It serves to tell the website that it is you signing on, and though this they can bring you back to the parts of the site you liked, or even automatically load all of your user preferences that you had stored. This allowed for a more stream-lined browsing of the site, and also it allows for a site to be loaded faster.

As was mentioned before though, cookies can also be dangerous. Instead of the helpful cookies mentioned above, you can possibly have malicious cookies. These are cookies installed on your computer either by a hacker or a bad website. Through this, they can hack into your folders and steal your passwords, or simply try and track you back to your real-life location. Even worse, these cookies could contain viruses that are planted directly on to your hard drive, and your virus scanner might not even recognize it. These can either be installed to try and steal identifying data about you, or simply with malicious intent to crash your system.

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