What is my definition of Internet Privacy?

Recent weeks have created huge spirals in the ocean of internet world regarding internet privacy. Everyone has been talking about the issue and the way big giants collect and store user data in the online world.

I recently stumbled upon the White House's new document regarding consumer privacy on internet and stopped upon reading that users had a right to “reasonable” limits on the personal data that companies collect and retain. I could not help myself on thinking about the unlimited possibilities originating from the word "reasonable".

My Definition of Online Privacy. Image Courtesy of ZDNet.com

For instance, it was reasonable if:
I was talking to a friend and no one was over hearing me.
I was in bed with my boyfriend and nobody was looking at me.
I was shopping and nobody was following me.
and much much more...

On the other hand, when I thought of internet, I would treat my privacy intact if and only if I was able to share the information that I wanted to disclose. Rather, than being forced to accept an agreement upon browsing any website telling me that my personal information will be collected, retained, used and never sold to improve my online experience.

It is my right to be asked before collecting any personal information from me regarding my location, interests and preferences and attempting to build my internet profile through collection of various browsing indicators originating from my source of usage. And if I do not want that information to be shared, I should be left alone. The way it genuinely happens in our everyday life. If I am not asked for that, that I consider as a breach of my privacy.

Click here to get Wikipedia's definition of Internet Privacy

White House takes Strong Steps to Control Internet Privacy

Finally! It looks like White House is taking public concerns about internet privacy seriously and is eying towards taming down companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft and other giants to keep ordinary people safe from their covert data collection techniques and taking benefits of users' lack of choices on internet.

The new proposal put forward by Obama administration enables FTC to deal with companies and implying "direct enforcement authority" to secure data privacy and consumer information.

White House intends to have "police power" over internet companies and wants to implement an enforceable code of conduct, that these companies would have to comply with, otherwise facing litigation, or penalties, due to enhanced controls offered to FTC.


FTC, currently operates with very less authority to tackle internet privacy issue.

This proposal is informally being dubbed as "Do Not Track" measure. But according to some experts, it will still enable the advertisers to collect your personal information. However, they will not be able to use that personal information to serve you ads as they have been doing so since the mid 90s.

However, future steps will let everyone know about the success of the measures taken by White House in order to control internet privacy issues prevailing currently in the market.

We can only hope for the best and wish everyone pushing that proposal forward, luck with sincerity at the moment. But there is finally hope that our leaders have decided that its finally time that White House takes strong steps to control internet privacy right now or otherwise it will be too late to take any kind of action on that issue.

Read more about White House Steps to Control Internet Privacy at Tech Crunch

Google's New Privacy Policy. What Happens Next?

Over the last month, all of us addicted to Gmail, Google Search, Google+ had been seeing those scary messages on top of our screens regarding Google's new privacy policy.

On March 1, 2012, that new "master" policy took effect upon use of all the company's online products by the users worldwide.

Google's New Privacy Policy

Upon quick glance, it looked like the new policy was more concentrated upon getting user data and streamlining it across all the products to maximize user experience.

Primarily, as stated in the Google's official blog, the new policy emphasized upon data integration between Google search, YouTube and Docs. 

“So in the future, if you do frequent searches for Jamie Oliver, we could recommend Jamie Oliver videos when you’re looking for recipes on YouTube—or we might suggest ads for his cookbooks when you’re on other Google properties,” blog mentioned.

Which means Google will be using your searches to get you more relevant videos upon browsing YouTube in the future.

While this technique mentions one of the many possible ways Google adopts to take benefit of global searches and user preferences, it also emphasizes upon the fact that company gathers search results and stores user preferences for its own uses, thus causing a privacy issue for you.


Announcement on March 1 also stated that if users were not comfortable with information sharing, they could simply turn it off through various options. But that would only stop cross-product data sharing, not the company from getting your preferences.

Google will still be watching you!

Potential of Privacy Leak due to Social Networks on a Mobile Device

Cell phones and wireless communication has evolved with light speed over the past few years. We have seen a shift of an era starting from Ericsson's giant walki talkies to Apple's iPhones. Cell phones and mobile devices today have changed from a mere communication devices used for simply calling your loved ones or communicating business deals to a medium used for sophisticated data transfer.

However, this improvement in technology have brought an immense danger of privacy leak that can potentially happen due to a smart phone.

Imagine, you are using Facebook or Twitter on your cell and your device also has GPS capabilities, which most of the devices have today. For some of you, who does not know what GPS stands for, it is a location tracking system which is called (Global Positioning System). Any GPS enabled device has the ability to send signals to another GPS device to communicate its exact location. I have already discussed the Facebook and Twitter tracking scenario in previous blog posts. What happens if Facebook or Twitter's mobile version has the ability to tap your exact location based upon your device's GPS signals? They would know where you are at a certain point of time. Won't they? Without you ever authorizing them to find you. Isn't it a privacy leak?

Social Networks and Privacy Leaks on Mobile Devices

And well, it does not only have to wait for GPS functionality. Normal data transfer over mobile social networks can even cause a user to leave traces for his/her friends so that they might know where he has been.

Social network on a mobile device has an immense potential of unintended privacy leaks for any user. Question really matters as how the privacy changed in the internet age. Or do we have to redefine the definition of privacy in the internet age?

HTTP Sniffing - How to Track Suspicious Activity During Your Browsing Session

Web 2.0 and 3.0 has changed the methods of corporations and agencies to track you during your online stay and browsing sessions. Large social media platforms have partnered with the world agencies to find if "You" want to talk about any certain topic. If "You" like or dislike certain issue. And they all do it with your consent. "You" deliberately allow them to build analytics based upon your internet usage and then later guess about your personality to keep you on their watchlist.

Today's post discusses a simple method that can let you know about the data transfer between your computer and unintended audiences.

Considering a scenario in which you are visiting a fictitious domain "ABCD.com", you will naturally consider communication between your computer and "ABCD.com" to remain only between you two and not to any other third party domains, otherwise authorized by either "You" or "ABCD.com" and with mutual consent.

For instance, upon typing the URL "ABCD.com" in the browser and hitting enter on they keyboard, you certainly do not expect to do anything else than land on the site's homepage, period. But, what if "ABCD.com" sends a message to "EFGH.com" and communicates your presence that hey! we have that buddy of ours back again who was very annoying to you last time. Or in another scenario, ads served by "EFGH.com" are also logging your behavior on "ABCD.com" and accordingly presenting you ads what they feel might be of some relevance to you.

That's a breach of privacy. And it is taking place through HTTP protocol upon your visit to your desired website.

Today's post provides you instructions about tracking suspicious activity that may originate through your browsing session and know if your desired website is also sending traffic to another website through you or their own servers at the time of your visit.

This is also known as HTTP Sniffing.

Instructions:

1- Go to http://www.cleanersoft.com/sniffer/free_http_sniffer.htm
2- Download the application and install it on your windows platform
3- See the action live as it happens.

HTTP Sniffing - How to Track Suspicious Activity During Your Browsing Session

Do Not Track Plus: Getting Rid of Online Tracking Websites

I stumbled upon this little nifty firefox extension on USAToday.com and I must say that I am so impressed. It is a little piece of software that tracks and blocks every online website that can potentially follow you while browsing any web page, without hurting your browsing experience.

As I have earlier discussed in my posts that users normally fall prey to social buttons and ad networks tracking mechanisms, this is a MUST USE extension to save yourself from those so-called online spies.

Here is how to get it working:
1- Download the software from http://www.donottrackplus.com/
2- Simply install the software on your firefox and restart the browser.
3- It will be fully functional immediately after installation.
4- After successful installation visit any webpage and have a look at the green button next to your home icon in firefox.

Just to test, I opened shoemoney.com and found that 6 online companies were actually tracking me while I was studying methods to make money online. Have a look at the image below.

Do Not Track Plus Notification for Online Tracking Websites

And once I clicked upon the green button, I got the details of who the culprits were. See below image for details.

Do Not Track Plus Details of Online Tracking Websites

I strongly recommend this software for any user extensively browsing or researching on internet for any reason to stay safe from potential privacy leaks.

How to Become a Millionaire Overnight - Don't Get Indulged!

How to Become a Millionaire Overnight
So, a catchy phrase for everyone, eh? and you surely did not expect this to be on a blog talking about internet privacy.
Well! you were correct in its whole entirety. I was not here to talk about my little secret today that would drive you a whole lot of money overnight. In fact, I was here to discuss the generic theory and the relation that it has with our natural instinct which later on creates room for losses and damage that we cannot afford.

So, if I broke your heart, I apologize and you can leave the page. But for others who are more curious like me, I have something to discuss.

We, humans, have an insatiable appetite for greed and voracity. And we constantly keep testing our limits throughout our lives while taking decisions and choosing roadmaps that sometimes hurt us to an extent we cannot afford.

How to Become a Millionaire?

You must've had heard and seen the phrase "How to Become a Millionaire" a billion times over the internet. And I can bet that you would have even tried a scheme offering such promise once till now. But let me put it simple and straight forward. There is nothing that can get you rich quickly (overnight) even on internet unless and until you are already enjoying some great revenue streams from multiple sources.

Ideally speaking, there are multiple ways to generate income over the internet but none of them guarantees that you will be making thousands or even hundreds quickly enough to get off to a flying start.

There is an old saying in the business world. "Higher the risk, higher the profits". And same is the case with stock markets. But in stock markets, you loose your money. However, in get rich quickly ponzy schemes, you loose your money as well as your privacy.

Every huge success starts with a small step!

My advise will be that you take your time out for research. Ideally 2 to 3 hours a day. Look for freelancing and work from home opportunities according to your skills on the top websites. Start blogging at the same time on blogger or your own domain,  look for an adsense account or any other ad network that suits you, and tie yourself up with your newly built internet career to achieve a long term goal.

Stay away from dreaming of becoming a millionaire overnight and do not attempt or invest in anything that promises unrealistic goals. Your internet career can be very lucrative but you will have to concentrate upon it rather than loosing it before even giving it a try.

Importantly! if you are in blogging, read startup stories of top bloggers to get you motivated and started in the right direction. Only bear in mind that you are just 5 or 6 years late than their startups. You can catch up. But not through get rich quick schemes.

Best of luck and stay safe.

How to Bypass Sophisticated Tracking Websites

There is a lot of evidence and noise about websites tracking you for several reasons. Some of them might be tracking you for ad serving, some for user behavior, some for your personal information, and some for covert reasons not generally known to anybody.

However, one important thing that should be kept in mind regarding tracking websites is the way they obtain information about you.

Type 1: Some will allure you to subscribe to a hot software deal. Or even getting your personal data like credit card number, social security number, name and address, etc. to give you a worthless software with a 60 days money back guarantee. When you will come for a refund, they will give your money back but eventually will have all your personal details.

Type 2: Some will allure you to download a toolbar or other software with a hidden spy program that will eventually track your every move on internet and send data back to the server.

Type 3: But, on the other hand some websites will track your web presence through Javascript and cookies as well.

While you may already have established a plan to evade websites of Type 1 and Type 2, in order to stay safe from Type 3 websites, all you have to do is to turn your browser Javascript off and disable cookies for untrusted websites.

You may notice that certain websites do not perform well once you turn Javascript off or disable cookies. If you encounter such a website and trust its contents and the usage, allow the website to perform its backend functions through turning on Javascript and cookies. If you are not satisfied, keep your Javascript off and cookies disabled.

This is the simplest method to bypass sophisticated tracking websites.

All of the modern browsers have the functionality of turning off Javascript and only allowing certain cookies to be downloaded on your PC for your safety.

In my next post, I will be discussing as how you can track suspicious activity during your internet session and know if some other sophisticated website is tracking you for unknown reasons.

Stay safe and give me some time to get back.

How Browser Toolbars Kill Internet Privacy

If you are a fan of downloading free software from internet, you must have had come across those installers that seek permissions to make their web pages as default home page for your browser, install a browser toolbar and stuff like that.

Those browser toolbars are nothing but a catchy piece of software to spy on you and send your browsing data back to their masters.

Potentially web toolbars have the tendency to log your:
1- Clicks
2- URL Visits
3- Username/Passwords
4- Browsing Behavior
5- Chats

And much much more (for the purpose they have been developed for)... Easily speaking browser toolbars provide you a little information but take a lot.from you in hidden form through backdoor channels and under extreme circumstances, even get you exposed to ads and spyware which can seriously damage your PC and privacy both.

Therefore, whenever you run into a situation during which an installer requires you to install browser toolbar, deselect the option and proceed to installation. Best option would be even discontinue the installation to discourage the vendors and send them the message that no one is ready to fall into their trap.

How BitTorrent Tracking Kills Internet Privacy

If you are under impression that no one has any decent knowledge about what you have been downloading through torrents lately, you are highly mistaken about the fact.

Lot of people among us have a very different delusion about internet privacy. Back in my college days, I used to hear guys chatting with girls on mIRC and telling them fake stories about their millionaire status and bank balances while using fake usernames and thought they were anonymous to everyone. Even if any girl believed upon those stories and finally decided to continue to the relationship in real world, the boy never used to meet her due to his original personality and condition against the one he had portrayed. Main theme was to remain anonymous and keep the privacy.

But today's internet is changing the world as wee see it. This post is not about mIRC chatting, but it is about BitTorrent enjoyment.

As users, we were exposed to peer to peer networking through torrents quite some while ago. And now torrents have become a major source of downloading videos, music, pirated software from internet. Everyone using those sites assumes that he/she is quite anonymous and enjoying the privacy he/she demands.

However, recently a Russian website YouHaveDownloaded.com has displayed the records of couple of thousands of internet addresses and the titles that have been downloaded from those addresses. That really blows off any fantasies regarding torrent privacy.

Although some wise people may argue that almost all of the current ISPs assign dynamic IP addresses to their clients in today's world and so there is very low probability of being traced through IP (internet addresses).

But consider a scenario in which you were being hunted by government guys for downloading an illegitimate pirated video or audio track from any torrent. In order to get you, authorities would not have to do much. They would simply get your IP and timestamp of download and would ask your ISP to get information about that IP - say at 05:30 AM, 10th of December, 2011. And your ISP would digg up their records finding that it was you who was actually downloading that torrent and using that IP at the given time frame.

Case Closed!!

As simple as it can be.

Fact of the matter is that internet is not a place to stay anonymous and private. Everything you do is monitored/recorded. Therefore, my suggestion is to stay away from trouble and do not do anything stupid when you have no technical clue about what is happening on the back end.

How to Create Strong and Secure Passwords for Your Online Accounts

NEWBIE GUIDE POST

Of all the accounts hacked on internet, most of them get fallen into wrong hands due to the predictability of passwords by users.
So in order to secure your online privacy, you need to have secure and strong passwords to avoid being hacked by any potential charmer.

Following tips will help you in creating secure and strong passwords for your online accounts.

1- Never use same passwords for your social networks, financial applications and email accounts
2- Never use less than 8 characters while creating your passwords. Ideally you can make it up to 10-15 characters long. Remember longer is the password, harder it is to crack.
3- Always use a combination of special characters such as *&% etc for your passwords.
4- Always use Capital letters more than 2 times in your passwords.
5- Always use digits 0-9 while creating passwords.

Finally concluding this newbie guide post, your password shall essentially be 10-15 characters long, not same as that of your social network account and must include a combination of capital letters, special characters, and digits to be considered as a secure and strong password.

Click here to know how strong and secure is your password - A tool by Microsoft

Stay Safe during your online sessions and do not forget to logout of your critical web application before exiting your browser.

Ignore the Web Links for "We Control Americans" by Tzipora Manache

While searching for the web link for quote "We Control Americans" on Google or any other search engine may get you exposed to a lethal virus that can cause serious damage to your personal data.

A post on rense.com stated as follows:

"The goal is to get people googling for Tzipora -- where they will find a link that will download a virus. The fake quote is like the a doll attached as bait  to the trigger of a landmine -- those investigating the influence of Israel will attempt to hunt down Tzipora Manache and will fall into the trap."

How to Effectively Delete Your Internet Search History?

This is a very simple and handy tutorial for web users and perhaps my third time mentioning of CCleaner for use of clearing unwanted data from your PC.

I mention CCleaner because this is perhaps one of the first free tools to clear history and searches that I have come across in a long time and that looks quite impressive and equivalent to commercial grade software.

Anyway, let us come down straight to the tutorial regarding how to delete your internet search history using the ccleaner tool.

After you successfully install the software onto your system, follow the following steps:

1- Fire up the software.

CCleaner Software Screen

2- Press Analyze Button to allow the software to automatically check for your internet history, cookies and recently used temporary files.

Analyze and Delete Search History

Once you press "Run Cleaner" button, you will be able to get rid of all the unwanted cookies and search history as quickly as you can imagine.

In order to delete your search history on firefox and internet explorer both, make sure you close your browsers before running that handy tool.

5 Tips on How to Keep Your Privacy Safe from Unwanted Audience

There is an old concept about trust and mistrust in general. We always discuss with each other about being vigilant and cautious about people around us. We always tell our children to not to hang out with strangers. Not to exchange gifts. Not to even go close to them. And up to some extent, we also apply the same rules to ourselves.

But what about people we know and show our trust in? It is a fact that people we know and stay with all the time can hurt our privacy to a lot more extent than people who don't know us but who keep on trying to get some hands on our private information.

And while browsing internet, it even gets more critical. While we share our sensitive information like photos, SSNs, Credit Card Nos. Driving License Nos. Bank Accounts, etc. with third parties and with people whom we like to do so online, we sometimes forget the fact that our own machine can even be compromised and cause our privacy to be leaked effectively into unwanted hands.

Therefore, I am very much confident about the fact that our privacy lies in our own hands. So, in general we can stay safe through:

1. Never ever sending sensitive information on public computers
2. Making sure that website we are interacting with uses https (secure) protocol to communicate
3. Keeping machine's antivirus updated.
4. Deleting browsing history on computers
5. Checking for malwares and keyloggers on computers to use

So stay safe during your online sessions.

Spam Emails Raise Concerns over Hotmail Privacy

A couple of weeks ago, I had a very surprising call from one of my friends. He asked as since when I had started to send spam mails from my Hotmail account.

I asked in return that how many he had received? And he replied, "More than a dozen..." And finally I ended up with an apology and explaining to him that this could have happened due to some malware hitting my PC.

But this was an absolute shocker for me!

As I am not a frequent Hotmail user, I seldom check my sent items. And this time it was full of sent emails that I myself had not sent and could not even imagine sending. It was more than embarrassing to have those scam mails sent to all of my contacts, including family, co-workers, some old friends and colleagues and God knows who else.

Assuming that it was some kind of trojan or virus, I scanned all my system, but found nothing. Important question for me was not to find about that trojan/virus but that while I logged in to all my accounts every once in a while including Yahoo, Gmail, and Hotmail, why in particular this trojan was able to get access to my Hotmail account? It could also play around with my Yahoo or Gmail accounts but it did not. Instead, it used Hotmail to send those 100s of emails which eventually ruined my respect and I had to provide explanation to a few of my close friends and colleagues.

Imagine the possibility of damage that little trojan can cause. If it can access my Hotmail to send some scam pharmacy emails, it may be able to read all my emails and send them to any third party. It may even cause some hackers to send those mails to any terrorist groups and create havoc for a person like me. A whole bunch of possibilities and breaches that anyone can imagine!

And on the whole, it makes me conclude that Hotmail is more prone to privacy intrusions than other service providers and Microsoft must take drastic measures to keep Hotmail email addresses safe and secure. It has to take Hotmail privacy seriously for Windows users.

How to Delete Your FireFox 8 Browsing History?

Although I recommend using CCleaner for a proper cleanup of your system, if you do not have CCleaner or any other utility, here is how you can delete your browsing history from FireFox 8 menu.

1- On File Menu, click on Tools > Clear Recent History

Following Form will pop up.

Delete FireFox 8 Browsing History

In Time range to clear drop down menu, select everything.

Delete FireFox 8 Browsing History (Everything)

Once you press "Clear Now" button, you will be able to delete the FireFox 8 history from the browser successfully. But for better results and safety, download CCleaner software for fixing your temporary files and registry problems. You may have a look at my earlier post titled "Free Tool for Your Internet Privacy" to find a link to download the free software.

Cloud Computing and Your Privacy

Cloud computing is among the hottest selling concepts in today's computing world. But when it comes to protecting your online privacy, you should better give a thorough reading to privacy policy of the provider.

Following document from Microsoft provides a set of very concise considerations for anyone to set forth before opting for any cloud computing service.

Cloud Computing and Privacy

How to make your Facebook Settings Private?

A nice video tutorial by Karen from MyBusinessPresence.com about how to make your Facebook Settings reasonably private.

How can Facebook Track User Behavior?

Facebook aka FB has been under high criticism in recent days regarding its user tracking and privacy policy. And while I explained an earlier accidental experience in my previous post about Facebook and Internet Privacy , here is the technical explanation of the situation.

When a user visits Facebook, 2 types of cookies are saved on to user's computer.
1- Browser cookie
2- Session cookie

While browser cookie is responsible for getting information about a user's first visit on the website, session cookie is used to store user data regarding login details.

Now, this is not a problem. Being a PHP developer, while I also use cookies to store basic session information on users' machines and than later use them to allow users to have the facility to not to log back in every time, it really helps to build a better user experience.

But, the problem lies with all the other 3rd party websites having "LIKE" button or Share on Facebook plugin with them. Each time a user hits a "LIKE" button, entry is stored in the cookie. So, users are even tracked off-site while not being on Facebook. As there are probably millions of websites having "LIKE" buttons, we can say that any social media geek is tracked through all those websites without being noticed.

For now, there is little information on how Facebook uses this data. But it can collectively lead to a complete profiling and personality analysis of the user. As long as Facebook uses this data to track plugin performance, it can be acceptable, but as soon as the social media giant starts using this data to profile its users, it starts to get ugly.

And the problem again lies with cookie tracking. What do you think about Facebook using your personal information in an unwanted way? I think it is already happening. May be not on a massive scale - but they are playing with your privacy that you leaked yourself. Do you agree?

Did Facebook Kill my Privacy?

What is the definition of privacy in today's internet world?