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ENSURING YOUR PRIVACY WHEN USING THE INTERNET
By Tim North
"Why should you care if you have nothing to hide?"
-- J. Edgar Hoover
PART 1: THE PROBLEM
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With its numerous benefits, the Internet has quickly become a
part of our daily lives. Beneficial as it is, however, it does
bring with it some problems -- one of which is a loss of privacy.
Most people would be shocked to learn of the amount of
information that can be retrieved from their personal computers
-- information that they did not know existed or that they
thought had been deleted. For example, if you were to allow me
into your home or office and granted me access to your personal
computer, you would probably be dismayed at how much I could
learn about what web sites you had visited, what chat rooms you
had been to, what newsgroups you had been reading, and the e-mail
that you had sent and received.
To make matters worse, much of this information is available
even *without* providing physical access to your personal
computer.
For example, your Internet service provider probably maintains
a log of which newsgroups you have been reading. Hackers
(malicious computer users) may be able to tap into your computer
and rummage through your personal files, and cookies (small files
created on your PC when you visit a web site) can allow
advertising companies to keep track of what web sites you
visit.
PART 2: TOWARDS GREATER PRIVACY
-------------------------------
The vast majority of us are law-abiding, honest citizens with
nothing to hide. Nonetheless, this does not mean that we want our
privacy to be invaded. In the remainder of this article, I'll
talk about three programs that you can use to secure your
privacy.
Evidence Eliminator
-------------------
The first of these is called Evidence Eliminator. Although I
dislike the name because of its suggestion that you are acting
improperly, this useful little program will remove the
information that has been left behind on your computer without
your knowledge.
Without getting into the technical nitty-gritty, Evidence
Eliminator purges information from all sorts of places that most
of us know nothing about. These include the registry, the swap
file, cache files, cookies, ini files, and a host of other hiding
places.
Evidence Eliminator also has two other useful side-effects.
First, it may remove tens of megabytes of junk files from your
computer thus freeing up valuable disk space. Second, this can
speed up your PC.
Unlike the programs below, Evidence Eliminator is not free. It
needs to be registered at a cost of US$74.95. You can learn more
at its web site: http://www.evidence-eliminator.com.
ScramDisk
---------
The second program that I want to mention is called ScramDisk.
This is a program that creates a hidden hard disk on your
personal computer. For example, your computer may currently have
a hard disk called the C drive and a CD-ROM called the D drive.
ScramDisk would take some of the free space on your C drive and
cause it to act as if it was a second hard disk -- the E drive.
This virtual (i.e. imaginary) hard disk has two unique
properties. First, it is hidden from prying eyes and will only
appear after you've entered a password. Second, all of the files
on this virtual hard disk are securely encrypted; that is, they
are stored in an encoded form that cannot be decoded without the
necessary password. This provides you with a secure place on your
personal computer to store your confidential personal and
business-related files.
ScramDisk is free. It can be downloaded from the following
address: http://www.scramdisk.clara.net.
ZoneAlarm
---------
ZoneAlarm is a personal firewall -- a program that examines all
the information coming into your computer from the Internet. It
also examines all the information leaving your computer.
ZoneAlarm does this with the intention of eliminating two main
dangers. First, that a hacker is trying to break into your
computer, and second, that one of your programs is sending
information without your knowledge. Both of these events are far
more common than you might imagine.
Installing a personal firewall like ZoneAlarm acts to protect
you against external attacks from hackers and to prevent
unauthorized information leaving your computer.
ZoneAlarm is free. It can be downloaded from the following
address: http://www.zonelabs.com.
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Tim North is a technical writer and proofreader who is available
to write or proofread articles, web-site text, user manuals, and
other documents. For information see http://www.scribe.com.au.
A free chapter of Tim's e-book "Better Writing Skills" is
available for download from
http://www.betterweitingskills.com.
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