Privacy

How To Opt Out of Behavioral Advertising

July 21, 2010

Behavioral advertising is online advertising based on your history of online activity. For example, if you visit an online shoe vendor, as you travel around the Internet, you might notice ads from that vendor appearing on unrelated, third party sites. This “trick” is accomplished by small cookie files that are stored on your computer by [...]

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How to Keep Your Old Facebook Privacy Settings

December 15, 2009

In a recent announcement, Facebook has made the default privacy setting for status updates visible to “everyone.” What this means is everyone on the Internet, not everyone of your friends. The reason behind the change is Facebook’s desire to increase it’s visibility in search engines and to compete more directly with Twitter (where public updates [...]

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How did Tagged Get My Email Address?

June 16, 2009

Although technically neither spam nor phishing, those aggressive emails from Tagged claiming a friend has sent you photos are certainly pushing the limits of netiquette. Ask Leo explains how Tagged.com got your email address and know your friend’s name, and why you should simply ignore them.

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What does Your IP Address Reveal About You?

October 28, 2008

Your IP address is the logical identification (as opposed to a physical address) of your Internet-connected computer or router. It is a number formatted into 4 octets (or words) separated by periods, such as 184.238.14.180. Your IP address is shared with every website you visit, and frequently included in every email you send. But exactly [...]

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How to Stop Security Breaches

September 14, 2008

According to an Information Week survey of 4500 computer security professionals, 22% of security breaches were done with “guessed passwords.” This means that the number one thing you can do to improve your security is to use passwords that can not be guessed. For starters, never use any word that appears in your account data, [...]

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Federal Website Guards Against Internet Fraud

March 18, 2008

OnGuardOnline.gov is a federal website with practical tips on securing your computer and guarding against Internet fraud. Information is delivered with videos, tutorials, and games designed to test and expand your knowledge. Topics include laptop security, social networking, malware, identity theft and much more.

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How to Keep Your Search History Private

January 15, 2008

Two ways to keep your browser’s search history private are to turn off auto-complete (also called auto-fill) and to clear your search history. Google provides step-by-step instructions for three popular browsers, and Leo Notenboom tackles the problem with plenty of screenshots.

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How to Password Protect an MS Office Document

January 10, 2008

To password protect a Microsoft Word document or Excel spreadsheet, go to Tools/Options/Security. Enter your password twice, and the next time you open your file, you will be prompted for your password. This is helpful if you document is sensitive (such as a list of passwords), if you computer is shared by multiple people, or [...]

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Best Defense Against Phishing

November 7, 2007

The best defense against spoof (fake or phishing) emails is to be educated and informed about how to spot them. eBay has a good tutorial on how to protect yourself, as does Stop-Phishing.com from the University of Indiana. Number one tip: when visiting a site in response to an email that asks for some web [...]

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