Surf the Web: Controlling Your Clickstream: Page 2

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Risky Business Let's say you play online poker. Would you want your spouse to know about it? Or suppose you use Yahoo! or Google to search for information about cancer treatments. Would you want your health insurancer to know about it? Maybe not. TRY THIS... For the next few days, keep a record of all the searches you perform, web pages you visit, files you download, chat sessions and IM, purchases you make, and all your other online activity. Next, analyze this information to see what it says about you. Once all these bits of data are pieced together, a picture of you emerges, one that you may not want to share with the rest of the world. Even though you may be a law abiding citizen, some details of your online activity can be embarrassing. Worse, it may be misinterpreted. For instance, what if you are doing research about alcoholism? How might your employer interpret this? What if you are researching a report on terrorist organizations? Would you want law enforcement agencies to know about it? As you can see, in a perfect world, you should be the master of your clickstream. Your trail of digital data should be as private as your telephone conversations, mail and other communications. Unfortunately, there has been a steady erosion of the privacy of online activities. Recently, the U.S. government subpoenaed search records from AOL, Google MSN, and Yahoo! A number of data-mining companies now trade in personal information. The purpose of this article is not to make you paranoid, only to make you aware of the current situation and its implications. Concealing Your Clickstream If you have privacy concerns, you can limit the amount of information collected about you. Here are some resources that we recommend: According to "How to Foil Search Engine Snoops", an article from Wired News, the most important step you can take is to manage the cookies placed on your computer. Two software programs claim to keep your identity private by erasing your tracks as you surf the Web: GhostSurf Anonymizer You can also use The Cloak to surf a website anonymously. Back Last update: Jan 3, 2008 Related Articles: Privacy Explore More: Search the Web Learn the Net (www.learnthenet.com) is Copyright 1996-2008. Michael Lerner Productions. All Rights Reserved.