Protect your privacy online

The August 24 edition of 60 Minutes alerted me to the problem of data mining and the unintended consequences of my activity o the web. I strongly recommend that you watch this segment and take action to protect your privacy.

Some of the tools that are mentioned are:

The search engine, DuckDuckGo

Disconnect privacy products, and,

MaskMe, which allows you to create disposable email addresses, phone numbers, and credit cards. Here’s a review that appears in PC Magazine, By Neil J. Rubenking

Hardly a day goes by without news of another organization suffering a data breach involving thousands or even millions of stolen user data records. If your email information appears in the mix, your antispam utility will probably see a spike in pointless mail. Abine’s free MaskMe service lets you communicate with retailers, discussion groups, and other websites without ever giving them your actual email address, so they can’t lose it in a data breach (or sell it to spammers). As a bonus, it also serves as a simple password manager. More…

Hopefully, we can prevent the internet from becoming a worse wasteland than broadcast TV. –t.h.g.

The future of the internet: the counter-revolution has begun

The internet is not what it used to be, and much of what we have come to cherish in the linked generation is at risk. Here’s an excerpt from a recent Economist article.

First, governments are increasingly reasserting their sovereignty. Recently several countries have demanded that their law-enforcement agencies have access to e-mails sent from BlackBerry smart-phones. This week India, which had threatened to cut off BlackBerry service at the end of August, granted RIM, the device’s maker, an extra two months while authorities consider the firm’s proposal to comply. However, it has also said that it is going after other communication-service providers, notably Google and Skype.

Second, big IT companies are building their own digital territories, where they set the rules and control or limit connections to other parts of the internet. Third, network owners would like to treat different types of traffic differently, in effect creating faster and slower lanes on the internet.

You can read the complete article here.