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Online Privacy Protection Tips

Part 1 of 3

While Privacy Guardian can help you protect your privacy by removing history, cleaning out temporary files, and gobbling cookies, there are still some things you can do to enhance your protection. Here are twelve great tips to help keep your computing experience invasion free!

1. Don't be oblivious to privacy leaks!

Did you know that unless you properly configure your Web browser that it's possible for your contact information to be harvested without you even knowing about it? It's true! In your Internet browser's Setup, Options, and/or Preferences menus, you might want to use a fake name instead of your real name. You also don't have to have an email address there or provide any personal details. You don't need it to make your browser work! If you need to give out your personal contact information for a particular Web site that you trust, just do so as needed so that you are always in control.

2. Eat cookies, don't store 'em!

Computer cookies are essentially little snippets of information that trail your progress about the Web. While universally harmless, various Web sites will store details about you and your shopping experience on your computer. They may store passwords, user ID's, settings, or even your real name.

The primary purpose is to make your browsing experience more efficient, but computer cookies can also be used to track your paths through a site, the links you clicked on, and other such items. While most cookies can only be read by the site that created them, some companies "share" cookie data with advertisers and other web site owners to better target their marketing.

While Web browsers are starting to give users more control over cookies, it might not always be enough. Netscape's browser enables you to make a window pop up before a cookie is accepted so that you can approve or disapprove the addition. It will also let you automatically block all cookies that are being sent to third parties or block all cookies no matter what. Internet Explorer also has a cookie management window that will allow you to enable or disable cookies on a site-by-site or global basis.

If you'd like to learn more, please see our article about what computer cookies are and how Privacy Guardian can help to eliminate them from your system.

3. Maintain a secondary email address!

It's always a good idea to have a back-up email address that you can use in situations where you might not trust the recipient. Sometimes you are required to post an email address before you can join a newsgroup, download freeware, or subscribe to a newsletter. In many cases you have to use a real email address because they'll want you to "confirm" that you subscribed by sending you an embedded link. Rather than use your real email address, use one that you acquire from a free and anonymous email service such as Yahoo Mail or Hotmail.

This "side" email account should be used in the above situations or when you don't necessarily trust the holder of your information. As well, even if you trust the recipient, you still need to worry about spammers or crawlers who are constantly searching for people to annoy. For example, you may trust the newsgroup you joined but if your email is attached to your account it may end up in the hands of spammers.

If you find that the spam flooding into your account is becoming impossible to deal with then you can always toss away the side email address and start a new one!

4. Don't reveal personal information to people you don't know!

Our parents always told us to not talk to strangers but somehow this lesson is lost when we're out and about on the Internet. While you will most certainly bridge relationships and friendships online, you'll want to be careful of giving away too much information too soon. You certainly don't need to be paranoid and completely secretive, but you should never provide information like your name, place of employment, phone number, address, etc. until you are 100% confident that you can trust them! And when you think you're 100% confident wait until you are 110% confident that they are trustworthy.

Continue on to part 1 of 3

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