Return to the Overcoming Consumerism Index
Online privacy. How to enhance it with simple techniques.
1. Make Firefox your default browser. Learn about its abilities and implement them and you will have done almost everything that is possible at the default browser end.
See Tools, Options, Privacy for the most effective things. http://www.mozilla.org/download.html
2. Learn about your router or modem. It comes with software that allows you to block web sites, keywords and phrases. Often there is an online help section. When you visit a website and see ads, right click on them and scroll down to properties. This will show you the originating web site for the ads. Copy this into your 'blocked sites' line in your router. If you frequently visit a site like a newspaper and do this carefully, you will end up with few or no ads visible. i.e. http://www.sfgate.com/place-ads/
3. You can open as many online e-mail accounts as you want. You do NOT have to use your real name. The legal council for Google said this on the radio in her interview at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on December 19th, 2007. [no citation yet] The personal information that you provide can be anything that you want. Consider opening an e-mail account just for commercial transactions, a special one for each online vendor. Use a coded name so that you can see where they sell your name, i.e. walmart_xyz@yahoo.com.
4. Finally, Never-Ever purchase anything online. Use websites to research potential purchases, check out 'groups' to see if anything negative is said about the products and then call the 800 number to actually purchase the item. [This of course presupposes that you have already looked for the item in a local small business].
5. Here is a list of blocked sites that we have found useful. You can copy and paste these into your router window one by one or follow his directions.
http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/#foursteps
http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/serverlist.php?showintro=0;hostformat=hosts
Here are router hardware and anti-virus software web sites on using their ad blocking features.
If it's too complicated for you, don't do anything, the cost and irritation of disabling your router will make looking at ads a minor inconvenience by comparison.
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/nip.nsf/pfdocs/2003082911174336