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.

Here we go again.  More on Big Brother.  The US government announced in June that US government agencies may track traffic and online behavior so that they can better provide information and services for the people who visit their websites.

The stated purpose here is two-fold. First, the Obama administration wants  the government’s websites to be easier to navigate, and to become useful. Secondly, it wants to monitor your behavior on its websites to figure out what information was accessed the most and hence, potentially the most useful.

Privacy issues are crucial to the topic of government tracking and targeting, so much so that the government memorandum the Obama administration issued discusses it in the introduction. The government is assuring  people that they shouldn’t be concerned about the US government watching their every online move.

“Big Brother is watching you”. Many people have heard of George Orwell’s prophetic novel “1984”. In most high schools, this is required reading. The book has a plot which revolves around one man’s struggle with the government and how observant it is. The world of 1984 is one where where no one can do anything without being watched. This is what he believed the year 1984 in real life would be like. In the book, nearly every street corner has some sort of camera, and the police have the authority to just barge into someone’s house unannounced to make sure they weren’t up to no good. And by no good this means expressing opinions and enjoying free will. Orwell was a visionary for his time, and many people believed his predictions would come true; the government would officially take over.

This scared the citizens of that era, around the 1950’s. They grew up in a time where they did not question authority, and this meant the government. This surrender of their will to their government would have made it easy for them to be controlled. Since at about this time  technology was going places that mankind could never have foreseen, Orwell’s fictional world seemed more imminent than ever. Ever since America broke off from the British rulers those decades ago, we have always had a healthy skepticism for any sort of government power. Although the government is not all controlling, people still are prone to views of it taking over and of martial law. The biggest problem and fear people have though is with privacy, and to this extent the government is the least of their worries.

Sometimes I wonder about marketing messages.  The video below is targeted at “youth” according to the credits.  I watched it 3 times and while I think I understand what they are trying to get across, they did it in a very, very bizarre way.  Watch for yourself and decide if this increases your desire to be private.  For me it just increased my need to stay away from odd videos.

With all the advantages the Internet has brought comes a new kind of crime. Internet crime is at an all time high. Thieves have learned that this is an easier way of robbing their victims than ever before. All they have to do is gain access to a person’s connection to the Internet and it is possible to take their identity or their money. This is being committed even as you are reading this article. Accessing someone’s bank account, credit cards and other personal information through the World Wide Web is the way a thief can get by with his crime with the least likelihood of getting caught. Gone are the days when going on the Internet was not threatened by the possibility of malware and spy ware. When a thief gains access to your Internet connection, all the information you are sending on that connection is out in the open for the taking. Bank account numbers, credit card numbers – all manner of personal information – is no longer safe. How do you take steps to keep this from happening? One of the best ways is to have an anonymous proxy server. This is one solution to keep thieves from gaining knowledge about your connection to the Internet and in turn keeping your information safe.

What is an anonymous proxy, you may be asking? First of all, there are two types of anonymous proxies. The one that most people use is the web-based. This is because it is simple to find. All that is required is a search on the Google site for “anonymous proxy” and a vast amount of results will be shown. Choose one of the results and go to the site. An empty URL box will be shown and you need only type the web address of the place you want to visit. The anonymous proxy will then take you to this address without showing your IP address. When you leave the website there will not be a record of your having been there. The anonymous proxy acts as a combination protection and retrieval tool. It gets the website for you and keeps anyone from accessing your IP address. Your IP address can tell a thief where you are located. How many people do you want to know your name?

Lately I’ve come across a number of websites that are promoting anonymous proxies.  These sites are filled with nonsensical articles and are designed to drive traffic to one or two anonymous proxy websites.  I guess I have to ask the question, if they are creating garbage websites just for the purpose of spamming the search engines, how good can their products be.

The proxy marketplace is filled with lots of companies.  We have a number of quality competitors that I know and respect.

Unfortunately, the anonymous proxy world overall is a scary place.  Many of these proxy companies are out to take your money one way or another.  Remember that when you are connected to an anonymous proxy server, everything you do goes through that server.  Do you really feel comfortable putting your personal information through a server owned by a company that may not be legitimate?

Before you buy anything online, make sure that you know who you are doing business with.  That is especially true with proxy companies and even software companies.  If you install something on your PC, then you are granting that program access to all your information.  Again, maybe this is not a big deal, but I like to know the source of anything I install on my PC.

One way to learn more about a company is to read their privacy policy or terms of service.  Then you can look up the company to learn more about them.  If you can’t find company information, run, don’t walk away.

On a related note, we get a lot of phone calls from people before they sign up for our service.  I think this is mostly to reassure them that we are indeed a real company with real people who stand behind our products.  Think that’s silly?  Try calling some of the other proxy companies out there.

Stay safe by knowing who you are doing business with.

Everyone knows about hackers and how they must keep themselves safe and secure so that they won’t be hacked online. These criminals can actually break into your system and completely take it over; they will be moving the mouse and not you! A virtual hijacking if you will. More common is the practice of just breaking through your security programs and reading through your personal and sensitive documents, and trying to recover some sort of identifying or useful information; think bank account numbers, passwords, log in names, credit card numbers, etc.

This seems like it would take a master hacker to do, but it really doesn’t. These hackers often are just somewhat computer savvy people with online guides (yes, these are published) on how to break into someone’s system. The great thing for them is that people usually all just keep their stock firewalls and virus protection programs for a false sense of security. These are easy to hack for hackers because you get what you paid for, and they were free. After doing so many of them too, they learn their way around a standard firewall.

Because of this, hackers try to stick to the people who simply have no protection, or just very minimal extra protection. Some people’s Internet signals are completely unsecured, and a criminal would have no problem breaking in. When you log on to your home Internet connection, did you have to put in a password? Look and see if the status is “unsecured” or “open”. Try to avoid this and install a WEP key which is a bunch of figures you put together that acts as a password. This might not stop a pro hacker from getting into your computer, but it will stop your neighbors from mooching off of your connection, reading your documents, and possibly giving you a virus. When they are on your connection, you may notice slower browsing speeds than normal.

Creative criminals: with its nice alliterative ring, it sounds like a harmonious title of a reality show. Or perhaps some blooper reel where the “creative” is in a less reverent sense. This is nothing to do with television though, but rather another medium: technology. The human race had its humble roots with a barbaric caveman who first struck fire and was maddened and frightened by its implications, although he probably did not know what “implications” were. Soon enough though, or really through millions of years of natural selection, we found ourselves in the year 1950. At this point technology is just making its strong debut, with the radio and the television dominating the airwaves and creating sparks in the minds of the greats who will bring us even more advanced technology later.

Anonymous Proxy to avoid identity theft

Although we did not know it the abstract concept of a grassroots link between users would be manifested to the tangible, yet paradoxically intangible, Internet. This system allowed people to set up their own sites via the WWW service, and brought about many great things. Unfortunately, it is through the Internet that we find ourselves the victims of some of the most creative criminals.

The creation of MySpace, FaceBook, and other social networking sites where people can communicate to one another through personalized profiles and comment, blog, and rate each others own pictures brought about a social revolution. People became addicted to these sites, and soon enough criminals began to notice and try and exploit the general public’s naivete regarding Internet safety. Through the wonderful power of deceit the Internet provides, these ingenious crooks posed as friends of some people, and lured them into the real world to steal, abduct, etc. The more sophisticated criminals even earned themselves a special title of reverence: a hacker. These hackers manipulated computer infrastructure and security systems to go right into people’s documents or bank accounts and take whatever they want.

For many people, their Internet service is something that happens as though by magic, but if you are curious about learning more about how your computer gets online and communicates with other machines, you are going to find that you need to think about your IP address. The term IP address is one that comes up with regular frequency when you are thinking about computers and networking and even if you know where to find it, you might not be able to explain what it means or what it does. When you are thinking about learning more about networking and when you want some simple answers as to what an IP address is and what it does, there are some things that you need to keep in mind.

In the first place, remember that the term itself is short for “Internet Protocol.” This is a label that has been applied to allow you to connect to a wider network, and if you are on the Internet, you are using an IP address to get there. Remember, though, that you are looking at something that has several functions. For instance, websites have IP addresses too; from your computer’s point of view, they are both a pathway as well as a location. When you are thinking about the way your computer interacts on the network, remember that it should act as your passport. If you are not getting an IP address, you are not going to be getting online at all. Your IP address is something that is granted to you by your Internet service provider, or your ISP. In many cases, you will be able to simply plug your computer into the wall or into your cable modem, depending on what your service consists of, and you will be able to get online right away. In many cases, you will first need to deal with authenticating yourself to your ISP, and you need to verify that you have service with them, but it usually takes very little time at all. With a greater interest in convenience and speed, there are companies which are deliberately working for plug and play Internet, where you can plug your computer in and simply start surfing as you please. This can make a huge difference to the way that you connect.

Privacy: it doesn’t seem like we have much of it these days. Nearly everything we do these days is being watched. This new surveillance is manifested in many aspects of life. A person just walking down the street could be caught on tape from a store’s outdoor security camera. A driver who runs a red light could be caught on a security camera embedded in the light and sent a nice little ticket and directions on how to pay the fee. Students in school and in college are watched the most closely. In today’s cut throat world, students will do anything that they can to put themselves ahead of the pack, and that includes an unfair advantage by cheating. Some universities with large, lecture style rooms survey test takers with hidden video cameras to try and catch cheaters and give everyone a level playing field. Some on the more paranoid spectrum think the government watches everything we do, and records it all to be used against us later for criminal implications.

This is far from accurate though. While the government certainly does, and this is no secret, record things about the American people, it is certainly only for our safety. Ever since the 9/11 bombings, our country has stepped up security three-fold. This is most noticeable in the airports; the conduit for the brutal attacks. Where you used to go through security with pretty much just a visual check and a quick metal detector, you now spend quite a bit of time. It is not uncommon to see a person having to take off coat, shoes, and belt to be searched and patted down, to make sure they are not a threat. To most though, this is just an annoyance and means they have to wake up even earlier for their flight lest they miss it due to a convoluted security check.