Recently everything is revolving Net Neutrality, Internet Privacy Laws, or Protecting our rights and privacy online. I agree we should be focusing on that, but maybe we need to go about this privacy thing in a different way. For example, I am pro-gun. I uphold our right to bear arms and protect my house and home. I don’t go waving an ak47 around in children’s faces and sit in camo behind tinted windows saying “Ahm protectin’ mah famuhlee” while drinking a miller. I dont think taking guns off the street and outlawing firearms for law abiding citizens is a good idea. in fact i think its probably by-far the dumbest thing the liberals and left wing crack jobs have ever come up with. However, this isnt about guns, this is about privacy.

Instead of hiding our information online, we need to find a way to protect it better. Someone can go through our trash and steal credit card slips and piece together our common purchases, where we shop, when we shop, how much we spend, how many cards we have, anything and everything.
Its becoming increasingly easier for anyone to do that online, and not have to get all messy with last nights spaghetti to sort through.

Face it, if you buy things on the web, log into an account somewhere, view an ad.. click on anything. Someone, somewhere knows something about you.

Scenario 1) you buy something on eBay (with paypal, an ebay owned corporation) from a home computer. You have default browser settings, and you have an out of date anti virus software, and you don’t have any anti-spyware app.

What’s required to do this:

• You need a paypal account
• you need an ebay account
• you need a credit card (a debit card with a VISA/MC logo works)
• you have an online bank account (what bank doesn’t have this now)

Here’s what happens:

• your IP is recorded with your 3 accounts. Bank, PP, and ebay.
• your general geographic location can be found
• ads are shown on all 3 websites.

As that plays out, the ads shown on each page you view record a few things. typical things. Your IP, Time and Date, the referrer(the previous page), your browser and Operating System, Your last visit to the current site.. and a few others.

The ad company now knows that someone with the IP: 123.321.45.67 does this:

Shops at eBay, has a bank account at Bank of America, has a pay pal account, bought a ceramic dish on ebay, shops usually around 8pm, and last visited ebay in the last 14 days 8 times. say your last referrer was Google, and you searched for “ceramic dishes” and then went to eBay and made your purchase.

they also know you primarily use Google. because of the referrer info. they know you use windows vista, and internet explorer 7. you also have Norton anti virus installed. (its a plugin for IE7 too)

they left a cookie on your computer, and it said all of that. then it sits and waits to be read again, by another ad from the same company.

you then go and google your name “Jane McDoe orlando” you added orlando because theres another jane mcdoe somewhere. Now they know jane mcdoe, in orlando, who uses bright house for internet (the ip gave that info) uses google, shops online, uses bank of america, and all of the other stuff. They now know who you are and what you do. All you did was make a few clicks.

Well fuck. Sorry jane, you are now the target of online advertising and since you agreed to let ebay sell your information you gave them, including your email address.. don’t be surprised if you start getting spam regarding ceramic dishes in the next few days. oh, and since it was shipped to your home address, paypal knows that, and well, they sold it too.

But wait, “they respect our online privacy”

Yeah, they do, they don’t sell it all or any “personal details” to anyone.

You remember legos? you could mix and match and piece fomr any set and eventually you could build this really cool house. Well, its kinda like that. the scandalous comapny were trying so hard to protect ourselves from is buying sets of legos (our info) in pieces. eventually they can build that house all together and there you are. an entry in a database. everything about you, what you like, what you dont like, EVERYTHING.

What about that spyware bot thing Jane installed? Sorry Jane. its a joke. you created an account, you gave them your password that you use for everything, and you also gave them your email address. just another lego set.

So what can we do about this?

I’ve been fairly safe for years online. I have never had my online privacy broken into (knock on wood), and i have never had my identity stolen. Here’s what Ive done to protect myself.

• Don’t use the same password. Use variations of the similar base, and use symbols. Longer passwords are safer. Every account i have created i have used a different password. Yes its hard to remember, but if you categorize and organize what types of passwords you use, its easier to remeber sets.
• Use a spam email. (gmail works great) youre gonna get spam. youre not gonna get around it, everyone and their third cousin will try and sell youre 3 yr old viagra. if you want a private email, dont give it out. sign up for new accounts with your spam account and let gmail filter the crap out. they do a damn good job.
• pay attention to WHO you give your information to and WHAT information your giving. Nearly every website now will require javascript, cookies, and an account. don’t be so frivolous with your info. you can leave javascript and cookies on, just take out the trash when you’re done. you can set your browser to delete cookie on regular intervals (every 10 days, every day, every time you close the browser, or not at all) you can also tell the browser to accept cookies from only the domain you are on. what this means is that ad in the top, it wont be allowed to store a cookie if it didn’t come from the website your on, and 99% of the ads out there don’t. they are run by ad manager programs. not everything you see is FROM that website you’re looking at. developers use something called an iframe and load data from somewhere else. its for tracking purposes. TRACKING YOU.
• use an up to date browser. Dont give me any fucking excuse. i dont care who you are or what youre doing. if youre using IE6, or firefox 1.5 you need a good smack in the head. there are so many reaosn you need the most up to date browser that i don’t have enough battery life left in my keyboard to type them all. I hate IE7 with a passion, but some of you are so thick headed that you don’t get it and still use IE. for the rest of you that might still have a brain cell left, you need to upgrade Firefox from 2.0.0.14 to 3.0 it came out, its wonderful, and its free.
  • on the note of browsers: you need to consider this. a browser is a doorway to the internet. you can have a large metal one with rivets and carbon steel, or you can have a creeky old wooden door with holes in it big enough for a small bear to get through. Imagine that as the front door to your house. what do you want protecting you?
  • AOL = screen door thats rusting
  • Internet explorer = creeky wooden door with a few holes. still works, but just isnt safe in general.
  • Firefox = Steel Vault door
  • Safari = Thick Metal door that we dont know where the handle is
  • Opera = your typical metal front door.
• clear your cache! its easy to do, it goes along with clearing cookies and history. simple settings all browser do it.
• forward phising attempts to the support/abuse emails at the corresponding company. Fight back agains these assholes that are trying to steal your life. fake paypal email and you know it? forward it to their abuse line:
  • paypal: spoof@paypal.com
  • bank of america: abuse@bankofamerica.com
  • chase: fraud@chase.com
  • ebay: spoof@ebay.com
• use your instincts. no one from nigeria wants to give you money. don’t fall for it. please?
• STOP CLICKING THE X IN POPUPS! Windows XP doesn’t need to install Spywarebot on your computer. be very careful of what you click! popup ads are disguising themselves as native OS popups. usually theres something blinking or flashing. True Native OS popups dont do that. when in doubt press ALT+F4 it will close the window and you don’t have to worry about clicking ANYTHING.

this list can go on forever. but in all reality, i do three common things when im on a computer.

• I install Firefox, the newest version.
• I install Avast Anti-virus
• I install Spybot Search and Destroy (notice its SPYBOT, not spyWAREbot. It’s specific. it means the difference between safe computing and a gaping hole.)
• i set Firefox’s options to clear history and cache on exit. I accept only cookies form same domain.
• I turn off windows firewall.
• I let Spybot clean the system and IMMUNIZE (this will add entries in your hosts file and block known bad ads. )
• i follow the above steps.

again, for you few out there that still don’t get it.

do this, at the bare minimum. Install firefox and Spybot S&D, and for fucks sake…. STOP USING IE6

be safe out there people. its a new world and its only getting worse online.