Category Archives: Privacy

Privacy

Anonymous Surfing and Searching

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Google makes billions of dollars tracking innocent users as they surf the Internet. Their searches, the sites they visit regularly, their time spent on those sites…it’s all recorded in Google’s massive database. You’re one of those people, unwittingly helping Google increase their bottom line. It’s time you stopped helping them for free, isn’t it?

Over the next few posts, we’re going to show you how to stop working for free. While there’s no way, yet, to get paid to surf, there’s no sense in helping multinational companies make more money. The first step is to surf and search anonymously.

1. Head over to SRWare Iron and download their Chrome-based browser. Here’s the link: SRWare Iron: The Browser of the future

It’s safe and free. While it’s based on Google Chrome, it doesn’t track your surfing habits. Chrome itself can be tuned to “eliminate usage tracking” (from Wikipedia). The problem is that setting everything up to protect your privacy is confusing for the average user. On top of that, we’re not 100% sure that Google can be trusted to do what it says it will. Google is a massive company, many hands are constantly mixing things into the pot that cooks up new schemes to make more money. Why not switch browsers and protect yourself in one easy step?

2. Once you have downloaded Iron, install it and accept the terms of service. When it asks you if you want to run it, say OK and you’ll immediately see why we’re so hot on this browser.

Photo of DuckDuckGo page
A cute name and a very safe search engine.

3. As soon as Iron opens, you’ll see the DuckDuckGo search bar. What’s this all about? What happened to Google search? Well, not only does Google track your activity around the web, they also track your searches. Have you noticed that a search for BBQs or Canon cameras comes back to haunt you later on? Ads pop up in many places as you visit sites around the Internet. It’s like they knew you wanted to buy a BBQ or a new camera, right? Well, they did know it. You told them everything when you used Google as your search engine. By the way,  Bing isn’t any different so you’re no safer when using Internet Explorer.

DuckDuckGo, a play on Duck Duck Goose, doesn’t track your searches. The site is not as powerful as the gigantic megalith known as Google but it gets more and more powerful everyday. Try out some searches and you’ll see that the results are more than adequate. While there is not map support, you can search Images and Videos as well as ‘Meaning’. The best part of all of this is that you’re searching anonymously. Anything you type in the search box stops there. The words don’t trickle into Google’s database of information on you. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?

Now that we’ve stopped making money for Google, we’ll move on to Facebook, another gigantic corporation that tracks virtually everything you do..inside AND outside of Facebook. Since they’ve just changed their Terms of Service, it’s a good time to revisit your Facebook privacy settings. In our next post we’ll do just that.

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Facebook, Privacy

Facebook, Privacy and Tracking – Our current projects

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You may know that Facebook is in the midst of changing its privacy settings…again. As usual, Facebook is not offering its users any way to opt out of these changes. They simply say, “If you use Facebook, you accept our rules”. Here’s what you may have seen as a notice on Facebook:

Photo of Facebook notice.
If you haven’t seen this yet, you will see it soon. Changes take effect January 1st, 2015.

 

Once you click on the notice, you’re taken to a page of lies, essentially. Facebook tells you that they’re doing this all for you, that their changes will make your Facebook experience better. In reality, the changes make Facebook a better choice for advertisers. How? Because Facebook will be following you around as you surf the Internet, keeping track of virtually everything you do in order to send your demographics back to head office. Once Facebook gets a big enough picture of your likes, your searches, the pages you regularly use, etc., they will sell your information to advertisers in the form of a profile. Advertisers can then tune their ads to the correct demographic, the right people for their products(s).

Some of you may actually enjoy this personalization. Others, including us here at Computers Made Simple, see this as a threat to our privacy. Facebook isn’t the only culprit here. Google does the same thing. Everything you do on Google, specially if you use Chrome, is fed back to head office, decimated and recorded then fed to the advertisers.  There are other web sites that do much the same thing, Amazon for one.

Over the next few posts we’re going to help you remain anonymous, to some extent anyway, on the Internet. We’ll do this by describing the processes that are used to track you, not heavy tech stuff though so don’t be afraid of what’s coming. Then we will describe alternative browsers and tools that you can use to mask your Internet use. We will also dissect Facebook’s new Terms of Service and explain what you can do to opt out of being a guinea pig in their ever-changing experiments to make more money.

Stay tuned! Happy Thanksgiving to our American readers.

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Keep Safe Online, Password Recovery, Privacy, Security

Two-Channel Authentication – Wazzat?

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When a site asks you to set up a type of two-level security, you might wonder what they’re talking about. Here’s what you should know about this relatively new way to protect your online identity…and your money!

If you’ve ever called your credit card company, you’ll remember that they always ask a few qualifying questions before they discuss your account. You have to prove that you are you, essentially. When you’re online, most everything you do is secured by a password. What happens when you lose that password or, worse yet, someone steals it? This is where multi-level protection comes in.

Take online banking, for instance. Most banks use a second level of security, taking the form of a question that you must answer correctly after you enter your password. If your bank doesn’t use this type of account lock, you should really consider moving to a more secure banking facility. Additionally, make sure your answers do not have anything to do with the question. If the question chosen is ‘Name of your first pet’, set the answer to be anything but the name of that pet. Your birthplace? Same thing. Almost anyone can pick up bits and pieces of your personal information from many different sources. Lock up your bank account(s) with cryptic answers to all security questions.

Photo of Two Factor Authentication
You want to use privacy protection like this. It makes everything more secure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Outlook, etc. make sure you sign up for two-step confirmation. For all of these sites, you can use your mobile number to receive a code that lets the site know it’s OK to let you change your password or log in from a new device. Look for ways to activate this. Facebook has been using this technique for quite a while. Outlook now makes it mandatory. Sure, it is a bit of a pain but they’re doing this for you, not for themselves. Protect your identity and personal information with as many levels of security as possible. You’ll regret it if you don’t.

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Adjust Default Privacy Settings, Facebook, Facebook 101, Facebook Secrets, Facebook Tricks, Hide Facebook Likes, Privacy, Security, Social Networking

Facebook Caveats – A reminder of what you can and can’t hide

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We’re still getting comments about Facebook and its arcane and obscure privacy settings. Not only are they as described, they are also well hidden. Here’s a short set of tips for you:

Things you can’t hide: 

Cover photos are all public, all the time.

Profile thumbnails are all public, all the time.

Mobile albums, the ones you upload from your mobile device, seem to default to ‘public’. You have to change the setting to something else if you don’t want these pics to be wide open to the world.

Mutual friends can’t be hidden. You can hide your complete friend list but NOT mutual friends.

While you can’t hide your ‘About’ section, you can hide virtually all of the details in it.

Summation: Three sections can’t be hidden. These are Mutual Friends, Cover Photos and Profile Photo thumbnails.

Actions you can’t hide: 

Photo likes and comments cannot be hidden. If you like Jim or Jane’s photo, everyone that can see the photo will know it. Ditto for comments. There is no way around this. Like something that isn’t under your control and everyone who can see that ‘something’ will see your like or your comment.

The act of liking a page. While you can hide the fact that you like a page, either by hiding the whole section or by quickly removing the action from your activity log, the initial like might show up somewhere. If the act of liking a page can get you into trouble, don’t like it. Read the next tip.

TIP: Facebook now tells you that “If you hide a section, individual stories can still appear on your Timeline, in News Feed and elsewhere on Facebook.” Change the word ‘section’ to just about anything that you do or share on Facebook and you’ll be well on your way to seeing that virtually nothing on Facebook is private. Even if it is private to your friends and the world at large, it is not private to employees of Facebook. OK?

Groups: 

If joining or starting a group will cause you problems, don’t do it. Group settings are up to the group admin and can be changed at any time. If being in a group threatens your privacy or home life, don’t join it.

The Answer to Facebook’s (Anti)-Privacy Settings: 

Start a fresh, anonymous profile, one that doesn’t reveal anything about the real you, and use it to enjoy everything you can’t hide on your real profile. Keep the new profile open in another browser and you can blithely click like or comment or post anything you want. You can relax and be your real self without harming anyone else. Go for it!

Facebook changes frequently. Keep up with these changes by Liking our Facebook page. Here’s the link: Computers Made Simple on Facebook

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Cloud Storage, Dropbox, Encrypt Dropbox Folder, Encryption, Keep Safe Online, Privacy, Security, Security Questions, Strong Passwords, TrueCrypt, TrueCrypt

Encrypting Your Stuff – Create a TrueCrypt container for DropBox Part Two

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This is the last post on encryption for a while. Today we’re going to show you how to lock up your DropBox storage folder, both online and on your computer.

(In case you don’t know about DropBox, you should really check it out. We’ve written several posts on this free and very cool service so search our site or head over here and sign up for your free 2 gigs of space. Here’s how DropBox works:  Post 1  Post 2   We’ve also written about how Dropbox can ‘save your bacon’. It really can! Here’s  a link to that post: How DropBox can Save Your Bacon)

Photo of Dropbox
DropBox – Make sure you encrypt your stuff.

In spite of what DropBox says about its encryption and the safety of your files in its Cloud, don’t believe it. At the drop of a hat, DropBox will open up your private files to anyone who asks. Anyone with a badge that is. What’s the problem with that? We’re all for law and order but we don’t think anyone should be able to go through your personal files without you knowing about it. Even if no one in authority has an interest in your stuff, the employees of DropBox can and do sift through your files on a regular basis. Microsoft does this too, this kind of thing is not limited to DropBox. Let’s just say that everyone does the same thing.

Once you’re clear on that, here’s how to keep your information private. You made an encrypted container right? We showed you how to do that in our last post. Here’s the link in case you missed it: Encrypting Your Stuff – Create a TrueCrypt container for DropBox. You should make more than one container. Instead of putting everything in one locked volume, consider making several. Let’s say you make one for passwords, one for personal photos, one for videos, one for financial information, etc. That way, you don’t have to upload a massive folder every time you do some work on the things in that folder. We’ll explain that next.

DropBox keeps your stuff online AND on your computer(s). The beauty of DropBox is that you can access your material from any computer anywhere in the world. Sometimes you will access your online folder using a browser. Other times, when you’re on one of your own computers, you will access your stuff in the folder that is on your hard drive. DropBox automatically syncs that folder every time you go online. If you access your folder in a browser, DropBox syncs any changes that you made with the folder that’s on all or any of your computers the next time you go online. You don’t have to worry about any of this, it’s all done automatically.

All you have to do is make sure that your encrypted containers/volumes/folders are in the DropBox folder on your computer. As soon as you put the encrypted volumes there, DropBox syncs everything automatically, any time there are changes. It really is that simple.

Knowing all of this, you’ll probably agree that this is the best way to hide your personal information online and on your own computer(s). If your house is broken into or if you lose your laptop, anyone can access that information if it’s not encrypted. Don’t wait for that to happen, do it now! Don’t keep the TrueCrypt password on your computers, that’s kind of obvious but we thought we’d mention it.

Photo of Encryption poster
Not just your email. Encrypt everything!

TIP: Use several small containers instead of one large one. That makes syncing much faster. As mentioned above, encrypt a few 10 MB containers and label them accordingly. If you do need a larger container for a video, for example, you probably won’t change it too much so syncing time won’t be an issue.

That’s it for now. If you have questions, comments, suggestions, please let us know.

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