Part of being a prepared individual is keeping a low profile. I
don't heavily emphasize privacy issues on SurvivalBlog, but I do recommend
that you learn how to fly under the radar, just on general
principle.
My philosophy: Don't leave big paper trails or bit
trails. An interesting article recently appeared at Wired
News, titled "How to Foil Search Engine Snoops" See: http://wired.com/news/technology/0,70051-0.html?tw=wn_tophead_2
For greater privacy, the author recommends using either the Firefox PC
browser or the Safari Macintosh
browser. He states: "In Firefox, you can go into the
privacy preference dialog and open Cookies. From there you can remove your
search engine
cookies
and click the box that says: "Don't allow sites that set removed cookies
to set future cookies. In Safari, try the free and versatile PithHelmet
plug-in.
[See: http://culater.net/software/PithHelmet/PithHelmet.php]
You can let some cookies in temporarily, decide that some can last longer or
prohibit
some
sites, including third-party advertisers, from setting
cookies
at all."
He also recommends: "If you are doing any search you wouldn't print on
a T-shirt, consider using Tor,
The Onion Router. [See: http://www.onion-router.net/]
An EFF-sponsored
service, Tor helps anonymize your web traffic by bouncing it between volunteer
servers."
The article also mentions
the tried and true (but slow) Anonymizer.com. See: http://www.anonymizer.com.
OBTW, if any of you techno gurus would be so kind, I'd greatly appreciate
a summary article about Internet privacy to post on SurvivalBlog.com.
You might even win our non-fiction
writing contest.
(The prize is a four day course certificate at Front
Sight!)