It's easy to be dismayed at the amount of information you might disclose, knowingly or otherwise, on an average day on the Web. But don't panic. There are ways that you can fight back with simple browser techniques and by using software and services that can help you keep your private life what it ultimately should be—nobody else's business.
1. Don't tell sites anything you don't want them to know. One way sites and marketers get personal information about you from the Web is painfully simple: They ask. So to a great extent, you do have control over your own privacy. Just don't give out any information that you don't want shared. Above all else, don't hand over your Social Security number. While financial service sites like online banks may require this, there is no legitimate reason a run-of-the-mill Web service would need this information. And whenever personal information is required, make sure that it can be submitted securely (typically via SSL).
Answer only required questions on registration forms; they're usually marked with an asterisk or boldface type. Steer away from answering questions that you wouldn't want in a database—things like your annual income or your mother's maiden name. If you're required to fill in that kind of information to register for a Web service, feel free to lie, no matter what your mother thinks about the practice.
Make sure to opt out (or not opt in) when you're asked whether you want to receive "special offers"; otherwise you're asking for your information to be shared with anyone who has a dollar to pay for your contact info.
2. Set your browser for maximum privacy. When you surf the Web, your life is an open book, mainly because of all the things your browser can reveal about you. Your computer's IP address, the Web sites you've recently visited, the contents of your browser cache, what pages you click on, and more are available to Web sites that want to snoop.
A simple way to protect your privacy is to be smart about using your browser. First, clean out your cache regularly. In Internet Explorer, choose Tools | Internet Options, and on the General tab, click on Delete Files. In Netscape Navigator, choose Edit | Preferences | Advanced | Cache, then click on Clear Disk Cache.
You should also hide your browsing history. In Internet Explorer, go to the General tab of the Internet Options screen, then click on Clear History. In Netscape Navigator, select Navigator in the Preferences screen; click on History and then Clear History. Choose Clear Location Bar to delete the list of sites you've visited from the Location bar.
3. Manage your cookies. Cookies—bits of data, put on your PC by Web sites, that can be used to track your behavior and identity online—have long been a bugaboo. Most browsers currently in use unfortunately give you only rudimentary controls over how they handle cookies, but the newest browsers, Internet Explorer 6, Netscape 6, and Opera 5, are much better.
You can take some measures with versions prior to Version 6 of Internet Explorer. To get at the cookie controls in Internet Explorer 5.5, choose Tools | Internet Options, then click on the Security tab, highlight the Internet icon, and click on Custom Level. Scroll down until you see the Cookies section. You have control over the two kinds of cookies that are put on your PC: those that are stored on your computer permanently and those that remain for just a single session. For either type of cookie you have three choices: You can block cookies by choosing Disable, you can allow all cookies by choosing Enable, or you can be prompted every time a site wants to place a cookie on your hard drive, and then decide case by case.
The truth is, none of these options are particularly palatable, but they're what you're forced to work with. Yes, by disabling cookies, you'll block a lot of snooping, but this is also like giving your browser a lobotomy: With no memory of its past, it loses the ability to do such things as log on to sites automatically and customize them according to your preferences. Some sites won't even give you access if you block cookies.
Allowing all cookies is equally unacceptable for those who care about their privacy. And while choosing to be prompted each time a cookie is put on your computer might seem like a reasonable compromise, you'll find yourself continually answering prompts, making surfing the Web annoying. We recently counted 50 cookies added to a machine in a single day's browsing.
One solution is to allow cookies to be put on your PC, or ask to be prompted each time for them, and then afterward delete any cookies you don't want. Generally, you'll find them in the \Windows\Cookies folder. Cookies are small text files. Take a look at some with Notepad. You'll often be able to identify the site by the name of a cookie or by looking at the cookie itself. To remove a cookie, delete it as you would any other file.
Internet Explorer 6, which is included in Windows XP and downloadable from Microsoft's site, offers big strides in cookie handling. You'll be able to set customizable privacy standards, which can block certain cookies that are likely to invade your privacy. To get to the controls, choose Internet Options from the Tools menu and click on the Privacy tab. A slider lets you choose from Low, Medium, Medium High, and High settings, and it lets you accept or decline all cookies. The differences among these settings are how they tell the browser to handle cookies that use your personally identifiable information without first asking you; how they handle third-party cookies, which are cookies put on your PC by someone other than the Web site you're visiting, such as an advertising company; and how they handle cookies that don't have publicly posted privacy policies that the browser can read. You can also specify how to handle cookies on a site-by-site basis. To do that, click on the Edit button on the Privacy tab and fill in the form.
Internet Explorer 6 ties directly into the Privacy Preferences Project (P3P), which calls for individual Web sites to publish how they handle personal data—in a form that can be read by P3P-compliant browsers and software. When you're on a Web site, choose Privacy Report from the View menu, and click on Summary. If the site follows the P3P specifications, you'll get information about how personal data is handled. Unfortunately, though, very few sites follow these specifications yet, so for now, this feature isn't a great deal of help. (For more on how to make your site P3P-compliant, read "Internet Professional: Respect Privacy or Else.")
Netscape Navigator isn't nearly as sophisticated as Internet Explorer 6 in cookie handling, but it does have some useful features. To get to them in Navigator 6, choose Edit | Preferences | Privacy and Security | Cookies, or choose Tasks | Privacy and Security | Cookie Manager.
As in older versions of Internet Explorer, you can disable or enable cookies, be prompted before a cookie is stored, or disallow third-party cookies. Click on View Stored Cookies and you'll see a list of all your cookies and be able to read and delete them. You can also accept or reject cookies on a site-by-site basis using Cookie Manager.
4. Opt out. The cookies that many privacy advocates are most concerned about are those delivered by big ad networks such as DoubleClick. Normally, cookies are used only to track your activity on the same sites that served them. But ad networks can put cookies on your PC and then read them across many sites—a much more sophisticated way to track your surfing habits and build a profile about your preferences.
You can easily opt out of DoubleClick and many other big ad networks. Go to http://www.networkadvertising.org/optout_ nonppii.asp, click on the networks from which you want to opt out, and submit your request. To make sure the opt-out has worked, click on Verify Cookies.
5. Watch out for Web bugs. Cookies aren't the only way that sites can trace your Web activities. Web bugs—1- by 1-pixel transparent GIFs (graphics files) on Web pages—can also track your surfing habits. Bugnosis Web Bug Detector (free, www.bugnosis.org, *****) is a great free tool for Internet Explorer that alerts you to the presence of bugs. The program will alert you when it finds Web bugs and give you information about them. Of course, some Web bugs are used for such innocuous purposes as counting page hits or reporting how many times a particular banner ad has appeared.
