Your privacy is important to us. This is why we have the [in]Security section and the following policy:
If you choose to provide us with information, we promise the following:
We do not retain any information about you in cookies (other than session cookies necessary for site navigation).
We do not gather statistics based upon your IP address (however, our ISP may retain your ISP address, and they may provide that IP address to others depending upon their policy).
Security is important topic. The most widely used consumer operating system is riddled with security problems, and it seems that the company that makes that operating system treats security as something of an afterthought at best, and a means to drive sales at worst. Every user of this software is either a victim, has weekly updating hassles, or submits their computer software to "automatic" updates that are a privacy and security risk all unto themselves - and then are still at risk due to the reactive nature of these security "fixes". Recent versions of that famous operation system ship by default with most privacy features turned off!! Here's how to fix it.
Another big topic is privacy and anonymity. Basically, you don't automatically have any privacy or anonymity on the internet. Don't be the next dufus that posts his crimal acts (don't do criminal acts in the first place should go without saying) and then gets arrested! What you say "online" can and will be used against you.
Virtually nothing you do on the internet is private unless you take deliberate measures to make it so. Take email, for example. Email has always been completely public: going over the networks in plain text format, being stored and forwarded by any number of computers in its path from one to another. NEVER send confidential data over email unless you have taken specific measures to protect it from prying eyes.
Following are a few references on these topics that may help you to better understand the issues and thus protect yourself.
If you find that the issues are just too much hassle for you to deal with, contact Cañones Software Outfitter for help!
Currently the best way to whip this monster is to avoid giving out your email address. It seems that every day there's a new entity asking for your email address. Like your social security number, make sure that who your giving it to really needs it, then give out a "fake" one.
Ask yourself if it's really that convenient to get an 'emailed' receipt rather than just taking the printed one and putting it into a box that you empty out every 6 months.
It can be a hassle to manage, but sign up for a zillion coded email addresses from the free services, and use these addresses instead of your "real" email address, especially for any e-commerce matter. Keep in mind that emailed receipts may have your name on them and most free services are harvesting the text of emails for useful information. Delete accounts often.
Have dozens of accounts with passwords? Running into new entities every day that require that you have an 'account' to deal with them?
Try to keep your 'trash' accounts and your valuable accounts (bank, investment, those who have your credit card or other info) separate. Use the same easy password for the trash accounts, but protect the others with good passwords.
Sick of stupid security questions? We are too, and the security offered by these things is non-existant. In addtion, they offer more intimate life details to be aggregated into some system that you have no control over. Ask your entities to not use them.
Contact Cañones Software Outfitter if you think you have this nailed! We certainly don't!
The content of your internet searches can reveal an incredible amount of personal and idenifying information about you. Be aware.
Google (and other search sites) keep records about the searches made from your IP address. If you're foolish enough to use a "gmail" account or other google services that you provide personally identifiable information to, they can and will tie it together to identify you.
Your IP address usually can be traced back to you if you're using a paid internet-access account of any kind.
While certainly no magic bullet, use the "Startpage" service to do your searching (taking advantage of google search technology) but keep your personal and surfing data private.
This is known as 'fingerprinting' and there are very few ways to mitigate this. They are more dangerous than cookies (more difficult to control). The only current method for the technically-naive to handling this is to use a browser plugin that 'spoofs' this information injection. We use 'Random Agent Spoofer' extension for firefox - you can find it in the firefox Add-ons Manager.