Web Content and Social Networking Experts

Your privacy, and Google's privacy policy, are important. With Firefox Collusion, you can watch who's watching you.

Google ignored an international out cry on its new privacy policy. So, what are you to do when everything from your phone to your Google searches is being recorded forever? Fight back that's what.

Why should you care? Anything and everything you search, or have ever searched for, for using Google remains tagged to you forever.

• If you search on a friends illness it gets tagged to you. If someday your insurance rates increase, or you can't get insurance, is it because of what you searched on? You'll never know.  
• You are told that a store is opposite 1200 Main street in your town. Who knows what goes on at 1200 Main Street? Whatever it is you are forever linked to it.
• If you do a research paper on terrorism, nuclear weapons, hacking.
• If you search for how to pay no taxes, make a bomb, use Google Maps someone, sometime, somewhere may want to know why.
• If you've ever done a school report on illegal activity those searches are forever linked to you.

This is real. It's serious. Not a joke. Information in the wrong hands can be a terrible thing. Be careful. Be aware. Be warned because everything you do online, with your credit card, gasoline card, your purchases. All of it is being tracked.

Here's an example and this, as crazy as it sounds, is 100% real. When a woman becomes pregnant, she purchases certain products. By looking at her purchases, her pregnancy can be known to a store, chain of stores, credit agency, or others. And you thought privacy didn't matter.

Download and install Collusion for Firefox and you will be able to see who's watching you online.

Privacy is a real concern, even if you do not log into your Google account because your IP (Internet Protocol) address is your digital finger print, and all your searches can be traced to your location. Literally to the very computer you are using. So, when you search, your location is known. Yes, you can use an anonymous server, but do you?

Yesterday, we blogged on DudkDuckGo, a search engine that does not collect or share personal information. It might be worth a few minutes to look into.

 

Privacy will never die. It's far too valuable to kill. Here's why you are not safe online.

Online privacy is on your mind, if its not it will be. The information you give to Facebook, Google+, and others as a condition of membership is your digital finger print. You may be interested to know that when you log into other sites with a Facebook, or other ID, you may be granting permission to access your data. when you use your Facebook ID to log-on to other Web sites you may be granting permission for access to parts of your data that would normally be hidden.

Here is a link to an excellent article at MSNBC, Why social media, mobile phones want your info.

Some people think that we are living in the post privacy era. Even not considering the illegal hacking and outright stealing of data, there is a vast amount of personal data online that people put there intentionally. This has cost people their jobs, ruined careers. Employers now routinely check people out on Facebook, read their blogs, and watch their Twitter feed.

You think this is bad? This is nothing. Keep reading.

Not even your encrypted Skype phone calls and instant messages are safe. FinFisher's FinSpy can wiretap Skype. FinFisher can even remotely turn on your webcam or microphone. It comes to you disguised as a fake software update to products like iTunes or Adobe Flash. It installs itself on your system. It turns that lovely computer of yours into the ultimate spy.

Now do you see why people say privacy is dead? This product is sold to dictators and used to gather intelligence on dissidents even in foreign countries. It and others like it are responsible for very nasty things being done to journalists and dissidents. Read the FinFisher article linked to above. See Electronic Fronteir Foundation for more on this.

The technology that makes this possible os created and sold by companies the world over. This is not done covertly. This is software you can buy by doing little more than attending the Intelligence Support Systems trade show.

Privacy invasion and outright spying are big business. If you are someone that people have cause to gather information on take great care that your computer is not spying on you.