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When we talk about privacy online we're talking
about anonymity, and the freedom to surf without your actions being
tracked and/or recorded. Could you imagine if there were
checkpoints from your house to the grocery store or mall and you had
to have your identity confirmed at each checkpoint? Well,
technology is a two-edged sword and "Big Business" has
been sharpening and freely using the other edge.
There are two issues we need to address in protecting
our privacy:
Cookies are text files that some Internet sites store on your
computer to aid in your experience at their site. For
instance, if you have an Amazon account, whenever you go to the site
it greets you with your name. This is because the information is stored in a cookie on your machine.
Spyware is usually distributed via freeware.
Upon installing the program, the installation includes a tracking
program which logs your Internet movements and sends the data back
to the company.
Note: Do not confuse spyware with adware,
even though some spyware disguises itself as adware. Adware
displays ads for products when freeware is installed and despite the
fact that it is annoying, no personal information is sent back to
the company. In fact, if you register the program (which you
should) the ads will cease.
Now let's go through some steps to rid ourselves
of our intrusive friends.
***The following steps are
for Internet Explorer users. if you use Netscape Navigator,
please go here.***
STEP 0 - Good Practice
If you are using Internet Explorer then you should
enable the deletion of Temporary Internet Files in the
browser. This can be done by:
- Open a browser window
- Click on "Tools"
- Select the "Internet Options..."
sub-menu
- Click on the "Advanced" tab at
the top
- Scroll down to security and make sure that
"Empty Temporary Internet Files folder when browser is
closed"
Please keep in mind that this does not delete
cookies.
You should also set your history delete days to a
low number that you can tolerate. The "History" in
Internet Explorer keeps track of websites you have visited in case
you forget the URL. I currently have this number set to 7, but
you can set it as low as you want. The best setting for
privacy would be 0. To set the number follow these steps:
- Open a browser window
- Click on "Tools"
- Select the "Internet Options..."
sub-menu
- Scroll down to "days to keep files in
history"
- Set the number to the right.
- Click OK
STEP 1 - Me want cookie
1. Click on the Start button on the bottom left of
your screen.
2. Next click on the Search item, for Files.
3. Once your search window comes up, search for
the word cookies.
4. After running the search, you should see a
couple of hits. We are interested in all the folders named
Cookies. These folders contain the cookies that have been
stored on your computer. Note the location of the folders so
that you can access them periodically to clean them out.
Tip: Create a shortcut of these folders on
your desktop so that you don't have to hunt for them again:
- Right-click on the folder
- Click Send to...
- Select Desktop shortcut and Voila!
STEP 2 - Me eat cookie now
Now you can double-click on any of the Cookie
folders and see all the cookies that are "infecting" your
machine. You can delete them the same way you would delete any
other file. Please note that some of these cookies are needed
if you automatically login to any sites, so make sure you know your
username and password for each site, or don't delete the cookie for
that site.
NOTE: You can do Steps 1 and 2 on your Windows Temp
folder and windows Temporary Internet Files folder. To cleanup all
temporary Internet files, not just cookies. Incidentally, some
sites try to hide their cookies in these folders. You will
notice that the index.dat file will remain. This is a system file
that contains information about your surfing. The file cannot
be deleted because it is needed but the information in it can be
deleted. Below there is a script which can be downloaded that
will clean out these files
STEP 3 - Cookies down, Spyware to go
This is probably the easiest step ever. All
we need to do here is download and install software called Spybot that will automatically remove spyware from your machine.
Click
here to download Spybot.
Spybot is definitely the new king in spyware and
adware removal. I have tried it for a while now and it is more
comprehensive, thorough, and faster than ad-aware. Ad-aware
still has a great following and great guys working to make it number
one, but in my opinion Spybot currently holds that honor. Best
of all, it's free!
STEP 4 - Extra, Extra
This page is geared more for the Do-It-Yourselfer,
and provides a solid first step to increasing your privacy.
There is a script available that will delete all the cookies and
temporary internet files, with minimal changes required by the
user. The script can be downloaded here.
The script is very basic but gets the job done. Use the script at your own risk!
If you decide to use it the directories that you found your cookies
and your temp files in should be listed in the script and the script
will delete everything in the directories just from you
double-clicking on it. The script does ask for confirmation
for each file deleted. If you have run through the script and
are confident it does what you need it to do, then you can change
the
"/p" to "/q" and it won't prompt you. This
script will also clean out the dreaded index.dat files. As long as
you are not using Internet Explorer when you run it. You can
also add the file to your startup folder so that everything gets
cleaned during each reboot. Please feel free to with any questions you may have. I do have my own
version of the script for Windows 2000 that does it all. If
you're interested, .
Step 4.5 - Registry Add-on
We can also use the registry to help us keep our information
ours. Download the following file: anti-spy.reg,
and either right-click on it and select edit, or open it in WordPad
or NotePad.
Notice the file has a .reg extension.
This is because this file edits your windows registry. The
entries in the file are used to clean out or
null the entries in the registry that keep track of your digital
movements. Simply double-click on the file and you're finished.
STEP 5 - Bonus
There is a simple way to avoid getting the
majority of ads that load with websites that you visit. Ads
from pages you visit are usually generated from an Ad server.
What happens is that when the site you visit loads, it calls the ads
from the adserver. If you looked at our My Security page, then
you already know that websites have a name address, domain name
(i.e. www.yahoo.com) and IP
addresses (i.e. http://64.58.76.225).
Expanding this network understanding, your
computer has a file in it called the hosts file. This file is
a mini-phonebook for the network that your computer is on.
Before going out to the Internet, your computer checks the host file
first to see if the domain name you are trying to access is listed
with its IP address. The reason for this is that computers
don't understand the domain names, but they do understand the IP
addresses. Every time you type in www.yahoo.com,
your computer searches what's called a domain server (big phonebook)
to find the IP address for www.yahoo.com.
However, before doing this it checks its own hosts file.
What we are going to do with the hosts file is
list all the ad servers and put in bogus IP Addresses that redirect
them to nowhere.
Your hosts file should be located at:
- Win 9x: c:\windows\
- Win NT/2000/XP: c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\
c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\
but do a search on "hosts" just to make
sure. The file doesn't have any extension or program
associated with it. Once you have found the file copy and
paste these lines after the last line in the file.
Netscape
Instructions
STEP 0 - Good Practice
If you are using Netscape Navigator then you should
clear your cache each time you open or exit Navigator. This can be done by:
- Open a browser window
- Click on "Edit"
- Select the "Preferences..."
sub-menu
- Expand the "Advanced" menu on
the left
- Click on "Cache"
- Click on buttons: "Clear Disk Cache"
and "Clear Memory Cache"
NOTE: I am unaware of any setting within
Navigator that allows the caches to be cleared
automatically as in Internet Explorer. If anyone has this
information please contact
me.
In the meantime I will be putting together a script for Navigator
users.
Please keep in mind that this does not delete
cookies.
You should also set your history delete days to a
low number that you can tolerate. The "History" in
Navigator keeps track of websites you have visited in case
you forget the URL. I currently have this number set to 7, but
you can set it as low as you want. The best setting for
privacy would be 0. To set the number follow these steps:
- Open a browser window
- Click on "Edit"
- Select the "Preferences..."
sub-menu
- Click on "Navigator"
- Set the number to the right.
- Click OK
STEP 1 - Me want cookie
1. Click on the Start button on the bottom left of
your screen.
2. Next click on the Search item, for Files.
3. Once your search window comes up, search for
the word cookies.
4. After running the search, you should see a hit
for cookies.txt. We are interested in all the folders where
this file is contained. Note the location of the folders so
that you can access them periodically to clean them out.
Tip: Create a shortcut of these folders on
your desktop so that you don't have to hunt for them again:
- Right-click on the folder
- Click Send to...
- Select Desktop shortcut and Voila!
STEP 2 - Me eat cookie now
Now you can double-click on any of the Cookie
folders and see the cookies.txt file "infecting" your
machine. You can delete this file the same way you would
delete any other file. Please note that this file is needed if
you automatically login to any sites, so make sure you know your
username and password for each site, or don't delete the cookies.txt
until you do.
STEP 3 - Cookies down, Spyware to go
This is probably the easiest step ever. All
we need to do here is download and install software called SpyBot that will automatically remove spyware from your machine.
Click
here to download
SpyBot.
Go
Back to Step 4
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