Leaving a Trail - What sites learn from your visits and other privacy issues.

Willie W. Webfoot talks about on-line privacy.

Leaving a Trail

"Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him."

—George Bernard Shaw

There are ways for people to track your movement in cyberspace. Your visits to web sites, your postings on newsgroups and mailing lists and other information can be traced.

Many times new internet users are unaware of this facet of on-line life. The links below both show and tell you more about what can be learned about you, how it is done and how the information might be used.

Show-and-Tell

Center for Democracy and Technology Privacy Demonstration Page: This page will show you what information was just gained from your accessing the page. It also will give you an overview of privacy issues on the Internet.

The Anonymizer: "Many people surf the web under the illusion that their actions are private and anonymous. Unfortunately, it isn't so. Every time you visit a site, you leave a calling card that reveals where you're coming from, what kind of computer you have, and other details. Our "anonymizer" service allows you to surf the web without revealing any personal information.

Cookie Talk

If you browse with Netscape 3.+ or Internet Explorer you can set your preferences so that the browser will alert you every time a cookie is being set.

Netscape:

Select the Options Menu
Select Network Preferences
Select Protocols
Check the option that says "Show alert before accepting a cookie"

Internet Explorer
To set Internet Explorer to alert you before accepting a cookie, do the following:

Pull down the View menu and select Options
On the Options menu, select the tab for Advanced
Check the box that reads Warn before accepting cookies
Click on the OK button

Now when you hit a site that tries to serve a cookie, a Security Alert box will pop up. You may then choose whether or not to accept the cookie. You can change this alert back to not alerting you to cookies by switching the option back at any point in time.

Web Cookies and Security: This page provides information about what cookies are and links of related interest including links to sites that offer software that allows you to "just say no" to cookies and information for webmasters who want to learn how to include cookies.

Other Privacy Questions

CDT's Privacy Issues Page: This page by the Center for Democracy and Technology contains links to all kinds of information about privacy in the digital age. Excellent resource.

Cryptography, PGP, and Your Privacy: The author of these pages provides excellent and well-organized resources for further study of many aspects of on-line and off-line privacy.

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