RULES
AND TOOLS FOR PROTECTING PERSONAL PRIVACY ONLINE What is online privacy? Online privacy gives you the
power to control the release of personal and financial information over the Internet.
Although there are new developments every day to help you protect your privacy, right now
there are many things you can do to protect the personally identifiable information that
is gathered about you when you surf and shop online.
First, follow some common sense rules online that will help you protect your privacy
and the privacy of your family. Then, check out the growing range of new technological
tools available to help you to control the information you share, surf anonymously and
remove your name from e-mailing lists.
Rules to
Remember for Protecting Personal Privacy:
Look for a privacy policy on every Web site
that asks you to register or provide information. Take a minute and carefully read the
policy. A credible privacy policy should be easy to find and easy to understand. Most
ethical Web sites put a link to a privacy policy right on the home page. The policy should
tell you exactly what information a Web site collects and what it is used for. If the Web
site shares the information with anyone else it should tell you and give you the option of
restricting such use. A privacy policy also should tell you about the security used to
protect your personal information and how you can look at the information that is
collected about you. These days, all consumer Web sites that treat information ethically
have privacy policies. Look for them and use them. If you don't find a privacy policy,
email the Web site and ask them to post one.
Look for a privacy seal. These seals, which are a recent innovation, give assurance
that a Web site is abiding by its posted privacy policy. BBBOnLine (a subsidiary of the
Council of Better Business Bureaus) and TRUSTe seals provide a mechanism to handle
complaints by consumers who feel their privacy has been violated. The seals also mean a
company has instituted systems for practicing what it preaches about privacy protection.
If you don't find a seal at a Web site, write to the site and ask for one.
Do not under any circumstances give your password to anyone. Hackers and scammers often
try to entice you to give you password through a variety of tricks. Be careful. Use
different passwords at different Web sites and change your passwords every now and then.
Use a secure browser that complies with an industry security standard, such as Secure
Sockets Layer (SSL) that encrypts or scrambles purchase information.
Print a copy of your purchase order and confirmation number for your records when
shopping online. Other tips are available at www.bbbonline.org
and at www.truste.org.
PRODUCTS AND
SERVICES
The market for privacy protection products is
growing and companies are responding with a host of technological tools and services. One
of the changes expected to have significant impact is the Platform for Privacy Preferences
(P3P), being developed by the World Wide Web Consortium. P3P will allow surfers to
communicate their preferences in sharing personal information with Web sites. With P3P,
your Internet browser could review a company's privacy policy electronically and issue you
a warning if it can't find a privacy statement. It will also alert you if the Web site
wants more information than you have indicated a willingness to disclose.
Other "privacy" products work in different ways. Some of these are available
free and many can be downloaded. Here is a partial list of those
that are available now or expected to be offered in the next few months.
The Online Privacy Alliance does not endorse any of these tools, but encourages you to
review what's available and decide which product and/or service best fits your needs.
ANONYMIZERS AND
INFOMEDIARIES
Tools for protecting privacy can be divided
into two kinds; those that work to shield your identify and those that help you negotiate
with a Web site over what personally- identifiable information is shared. Anonymizers make
you "anonymous" by giving you an untraceable alias. While a useful tool for some
consumers, anonymizers can protect lawbreakers. As The New York Times wrote: "The
technologies are morally neutral. They could be used, for example to commit a crime or to
report one anonymously."
Infomediaries, a new and relatively untested technology, allow you to exercise choice
in what sorts of personal information is shared at each site you visit. They require that
you create a detailed personal profile to enable the technology to negotiate the release
of personal information on your behalf.
Services also exist for removing your name from online mailing lists and directories.
Get more information from: www.junkbusters.com, <HELP@INFOUSA.COM and help@bigfoot.com.
Anonymizer products include:
Anonymizer, one of the best-known and oldest products, allows you to surf anonymously.
It also offers anonymous email and Net access. Visit www.anonymizer.com.
Freedom from the Canadian company, Zero Knowledge Systems, will charge $50 a year to
provide up to five online aliases and allow anonymous profiles. Because the Montreal-based
company does not have to follow U.S. law, Freedom can use stronger encryption than similar
American products. Not even Zero Knowledge can trace surfing, posting or chat room visits
back to the user. It will be available later this spring.
Crowds, developed by Bell Labs and AT&T Labs, uses a virtual "crowd" of
people to hide your identity while Web surfing. Users are placed in random groups and each
time you instruct a browser the command is randomly routed through the machine of someone
else in the group so that it is impossible to track a group member individually.
Information on Crowds is available from the AT&T Web site at www.research.att.com/projects/crowds
.
The Onion routing system, under development by the Naval Research Laboratory, keeps
third parties from tracking your surfing activities by randomly routing messages through a
series of routers before the message reaches its destination.
Among the new infomediary products being offered are:
DigitalMe, a software product that will be available soon from Novell, stores your
personal information and uses it to automatically fill out forms at Web sites, letting you
review them before they are submitted. The software, available by download in June, will
keep track of your passwords and names used from site to site. Check out the new product
at www.digitalme.com.
Jotter, a new desktop tool bar, allows you to employ an automatic form for shopping
online, reminds you of your IDs and passwords and locates privacy policies on Web sites so
that you can see how a company or organization handles personal data. Information on the
new product can be found at www.jotter.com.
The software can be downloaded free from the Web site.
Lumeria hides individually identifiable data and then allows you to charge companies to
see it. This California-based company believes that if personal information is valuable to
businesses then they should pay for it. Information on the product can be found at www.lumeria.com. The free portion of the new service
can place you on a "do not contact" list for direct marketers. Lumeria also
allows you to surf anonymously by providing inaccurate "cookie" information to
Web sites.
Persona by PrivaSeek will allow you to surf anonymously and also "sell" your
personal information in exchange for discounts at Web sites. PrivaSeek, www.privaseek.com, will get a commission on the
transactions. It will be available soon.
SECURE SERVERS
and BROWSERS
Most Web sites offer some protection for
sensitive account information, but to be safe you should shop at sites with one of two
security methods: Secure Electronic Transfer Transaction or Secure Socket Layer. Both
Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer can hook into these standards.
Secure Electronic Transfer Transaction (SET) works by using encryption to safeguard
your credit card information while it's traveling over the Web. It also uses digital
signatures to ensure the identity of both you and the merchant. One advantage of SET is
that your credit card number is not stored in the merchant's browser.
Secure Socket Layer (SSL) creates a secure connection for transmitting documents and
information such as credit card numbers over the Internet. It is fast and easy for Web
sites to set up. SSL may become the accepted standard for Web based transactions that
require a high degree of security.
It is easy to tell if you're using a secure site, just look for an "s" on the
end of the "http" in the site's Web address ("https"). The
"https" will appear when you are on a screen that asks for your account
information.
A recent development is secure HTTP (SHTTP) a secure method for transmitting individual
messages, such as email, over the Web. This differs from SSL and SET, which are primarily
used for doing business at Web sites.
For additional information about how to protect your privacy, check out the Call for
Action Web site, www.callforaction.org where
they have posted the ABC's of Privacy.
Information courtesy of Online
Privacy Alliance
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