Posts Tagged ‘privacy’

Reviewing The Patriot Act Plus Why This Bill Affects Everyone’s Civil Liberties

March 6th, 2012 by Cindy Marshson

A movement to vote against the extension of the PATRIOT Act was called for by a number of groups. The voting was scheduled February 8, 2011. The so-called H.R. 514 is about to be extended, although it needs a YES vote by a full two-thirds of the House’s members. The reauthorization was viewed as being fast-tracked to the House floor.

Contentions have been aired questioning the manner the bill would be extended. One point that was raised was that there have been no important reforms to the previous law that would warrant its extension. According to critics, there is no provision for supervision and accountability. If ever, it is extremely weak and would not hold water.

Last year yet, the bill was proposed and debated on. Among the proposed reforms were on the areas of checks and balances. As the old version was criticized as lacking of these features, the new one is “ripe” with those. However the debates and negotiations went on until the deadline was already close by. The move for extension of the older version came up when the amendments could no longer make it to the deadline. In February of last year, the extension was moved until this February 2011. In addition, there was a pledge made to fully take into account the raised issues ahead of the next deadline.

The uncertainty with the approaching extension is that no debates are possible. There is no actual reform that could be anticipated with the deadline set until December 8, 2011. The projected revisions would not be carried out because no one is given the option to offer changes. The outcome would be the same PATRIOT as it is in its present-day form.

It can be presumed that there is something about the bill that raised such reaction. For one, the law allows the government to place any person under surveillance. Covert court orders will be given under Section 215. With this, access to confidential records could be established. These consist of internet, phone and corporate records.

Under this law, foreign intelligence wiretaps might be permitted. Anybody, even those without connection to any foreign power or terrorist group, can be tapped. Whenever government “feels” there is a requirement to do so, any telephone number, email account or other communications facility can be accessed.

Those were the provisions that critics say should not be incorporated in the renewal. In order for it to be significant, legitimate reforms ought to be done. Weak points must be eliminated, and more checks and balances should be built-in. This could be done if debates are allowed. This is the only way to ensure that civil liberties are protected.

Privacy is not a given. From the Patriot Act to twitter, our Internet privacy is not safe. If you are interested in protecting your Internet privacy, please visit our site on using an anonymous proxy server to surf the Internet safely and securely. Here is more info on privacy issues for you to read.

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How Companies Take Advantage of Privacy Options

January 19th, 2012 by Deb Eggstauger

At the RSA Security Europe Conference, individual privacy was brought to the forefront of people’s discussions. It was argued that communication and society has changed forever and that will have a negative impact on personal privacy. In the decades before, conversations were generally done face to face or over the phone. Yet nowadays, lots of communication is carried out via email and/or websites. This creates a saved hard record of all correspondence.

Deleting an email does not necessarily get rid of it. The receiver or sender still has a copy on their account. Furthermore, large data centres make it really easy to record online conversation. It was argued that inexpensive technology and ever increasing memory capacities mean that data storage and collection is now more accomplishable than it was a few years ago.

You might be asking why it would matter so much, but private data equals more money. Having access to loads of personal data can often result in companies making more money from advertising. Daily, this is routinely seen when signing up for anything new, with those ‘cross here if you do not want to receive any correspondence from us’; this occurs offline as well. However, how many users read all of the privacy policies and terms of agreement for the computer applications we use or the sites which we visit? It may be astonishing to examine a few of them and realize precisely what the website can do with your collected data.

Facebook has routinely been derided for its complicated privacy policy and not being transparent. It is totally possible for you to read almost all the info on someone’s profile if they haven’t enabled selected privacy options. While the safety conscience among us all will ensure to set the privacy options accordingly, a lot of people usually do not know they’re exposing themselves to prospective online crime and identity theft. It’s not just sufficient to claim that it is their own problem if their level of privacy is compromised. Moreover, companies should never wish to deceive consumers for the purpose of less difficult data collection.

Google was also faced with lots of political and social complaints with regard to its unauthorized collection of private data while collecting data as a part of its StreetView services. Google effectively listened in to people’s wi-fi connections and subsequently stored private data. Google’s nonchalant reaction upset lots of people and many national governments were drawn into the debate challenging the legality of what Google did.

The more information an organization has on you, the more they can charge companies in order to target users. If an organization knows that you are female, aged between 30-40 and have four children, then advertisers will be willing to pay more since they are able to target their advertisements more efficiently. If an advertisement is targeted at the correct user then the sellers will get more results. Marketers are willing to pay more since then they could target with toy advertisements, home improvement advertisements, kitchen advertisements and so on, compared to advertisements for weight lifting or extreme sports (although these are gross stereotypes).

Hence, it is key to ensure you have read the terms of agreement accurately. Whenever you register for anything you are signing a contract. It is actually horrible to think one ill-judged registration for a website could result in anything bad a few years later. Always read the small print, it might sound clichd but it just may save you from sticky situations. Furthermore, you should also always keep safe online safety practices. Having a great password is a great first step but you might also want to use a password manager that will increase your online security! You can stash passwords to a site and keep them secure and safe.

If you eat a lot while surfing the internet, you may experience this. Sometimes it’s so bad that it feels like this!

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Basic Techniques And Information On How Exactly To Change An IP Address

November 21st, 2011 by William Edward Mason

There are many reasons why people would want to change their IP addresses. First of all, with a different IP address you will be safe from malicious software that relies on your IP address for attacks. Besides, sometimes a different unrelated IP address gives an impression that you are from a different location and that can open more options for you while surfing the web. So the leads us to the question on How to change your IP address?

IP Address is basically a logical address that is unique to every computer connected to the internet. The uniqueness is vital for any IP address as it helps identify the computer uniquely without which no communication is possible. The IP addresses are generally represented in dotted decimal format of A. B. C. D. The numbers A, B, C and D in the IP addresses are decimal integers ranging from 0 to 255.

Unique IP address helps identify location and sometimes you may want o hide just that information. For this you need some solution that can fake your IP address and not disclose your information. Two very commonly used solutions for this are the CGI/Proxy and the change IP Proxy server. Both these solutions require all the requests to flow through them which allows them to make the changes and fake IP addresses.

The CGI proxy solution uses a dummy IP address to host the same contents as the real server. Thus you would actually by accessing a different IP but getting the same content from the internet. This is a great solution to access restricted sites from the computer. Many times there are limitations in organizations like schools to ensure that users can access just the educational contents. CGI proxies can circumvent such changes.

The best part about the CGI proxy is that if you access any other site from this proxy site even that will be routed through the proxy. This solution, however works only with web browsers. It is not a complete solution for all kinds of services. For this we need to use the proxy servers.

The proxy servers are the first point of contact for the computers. The main reason for using proxies was to speed up the web browsing experience. The most common pages regularly accessed as cached in the proxy server which allows quick access for the computers requesting that service.

This process actually leads to another important benefit with proxy servers. Since all the requests are routed through the proxy server, they can change the IP address of the requests to hide the real IP address. So the local computers will always connect to the internet over a different IP address from their real one.

The proxy servers can deliver varied levels of anonymity. The fully anonymous connection means that the IP is faked and the servers cannot determine that a proxy is being used. On the other hand, a transparent proxy would mean that the other aspects of the request are changed but not the IP address. So Change IP proxy servers can provide a well rounded solution.

Don’t wait! Use an IP Changer today to protect your Internet identity. Your safety on the Internet requires that you change it often.

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Why You Need To Protect Your Online Identity

November 4th, 2011 by Joanne Rapfield

The internet has taken over the world that we live in. It has become increasingly difficult to get anything done offline. When there is an interruption in internet connectivity you want to pull your hair out! But beware of the scammers and hackers who prey on the information you inadvertently give out. There are ways to surf anonymously to protect your internet privacy.

The amazing thing about the information era is that there is so much of it available! The scary thing is that you are a contributor to this pool of information and it is not necessarily what you put up on your blog! You are constantly sending out information as long as you are on the net.

Let us step back a little and ask ourselves what private information we should be worried about submitting. Most people are wary of credit card fraud. This is very serious and has led to some people even avoiding doing shopping online altogether. Surprisingly it is quite rare for this to happen as most financial institutions have highly encrypted software to secure this information. You are far more likely to get your pocket picked than get defrauded online.

Back to those pesky cookies! They do not come in flavors but they are tags that a website owner will use to get information from you. Mostly it is information on other sites that you visit but scarier still information that you might have given out on those websites. That leaves the door open to abuse.

Every time that you use your browser it acquires an address from which it operates. It becomes easy for anyone with the necessary know how to decipher where you might possibly be by either your web address or your email address. This is a scary notion. Especially on the business front where a lot of personal information is sifted through a myriad sites every day!

The solution to tackling these two problems is simple; you can disable the cookie option in your browser or automate it by getting software to do it for you all the time. Or you can use a proxy server to mask your location. The proxy server is simply using a remote machine to log onto the net thus shielding any information on where you are in the world. This is a very good option especially if you have children who use the internet.

The beauty of using a proxy is that you mask your real location and not have to worry abut sending out any inkling as to where you are on the planet.

These are the two things that need to be taken care to ensure your security from online predators, hackers and increasingly pedophiles on the internet.

To ensure that your loved ones are secure use a proxy server or get appropriate software to handle your cookies and you can enjoy the joys of the internet . Go ahead and surf anonymously to protect your internet privacy.

Protect your Internet privacy by changing your IP address with an encrypted IP Changer. You need to be proactive to protect your privacy take the 1st step with a free trial of our Change IP software.

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Don’t Look At Me

July 9th, 2011 by Andrew Virender

At this time you can set aside privacy and share photographs with friends and also with strangers. The latest photo-sharing network, Color, developed by Bill Nguyen is here! After just two weeks of exposure, it promises to seize a fairly good market share. Nguyen is the past owner of a music-streaming company Lala that he sold to Apple in 2009 for around $80 million.

Color is a social networking app for iPhone and Android devices that lets you share your photos with any person within 150 feet. Basically, it is a photo-sharing application that is very comparable to other mobile apps like Instagram or PicPiz. The advantageous factor for Color is its proximity-based sharing performance. Because of this, it holds a far better possibility.

It only needs two users using the application in the vicinity of each other to benefit from. Automatically, Color notes it and “records” the frequency of these “friendship” events. In your contacts, the people you hang out with generally appears higher up on your list. The person’s position goes down when you associate with him less frequently. Take note that it doesn’t make a difference whether you know these people you come physically close to most often. As long as they are within your “area of influence”, Color will treat them as friends.

In spite of the big possibility of this new app to create a new group of users, some are scared. As it has been said earlier, Color does not present any privacy settings. All photos that are uploaded are entirely open, shared with all other user’s phones inside 150 feet. Although the company has asked users to respect individual privacy, the possibility of misuse is not unfeasible.

Sequoia Capital, m Bain Capital and Silicon Valley Bank have put in a sizable sum of investment adding up $41 million. This bulky funding from such companies, taking into consideration that the app is very new, is a sign that Color has a colossal marketing possibility. And where would the revenues come from? These would surely come from advertisers.

It could be safely projected that Color would attain reputation in a short period. Some even say that it is already out of the question. Its potential to create an “elastic network” facilitates the user’s probability of finding more friends. Color has set a new standard in providing an alternative to those users who find difficulty in using the uncommon social networking interface.

The number of ways to lose your privacy increases every day. At least you can protect your online privacy by using a change ip proxy service to change your IP address.

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Income Taxes, Privacy Regulations Equal the Failure to Defend Children

June 26th, 2011 by Suzanne Pepmanson

Surprisingly, Washington Federal treasury officials found an unusual connection linking tax returns and matters of missing children. They scrutinized more than 1,700 of these investigations and found an unusual pattern. More than 1/3 of these children had been declared on tax returns by relatives that are suspects for their kidnap. Many child abduction cases are still left unsolved and the children still missing.

A Senator and missing children’s advocate are working to connect with law enforcement agencies. They recommended that tax returns of suspected abductors include data that might show the way to the suspects. They also recommended that law enforcement agencies should be approved to examine the tax return data of these “suspects”. They believe that these would aid solve the cases across the U.S.

The Senator argued that the state ought to give leeway on the privacy of those tax return records. They hold data that could potentially show the way to the solution of these matters. These should be made accessible. The Senator is a former Hennepin County attorney who describes that there is no sense in overprotecting tax information data. The state would protect privacy but it should also exhaust all probable avenues in trying to find out where the kids are.

Supporters of civil liberties however see that exposing tax information to law enforcers would create further issues. Privacy laws regarding taxes are one of the strongest in the U.S. Allowing tax information to become “public” would also invite other compelling interests. Examples could be those of health care information and additional government services.

The child advocate’s son, an 11 year-old, was kidnapped near their St. Joseph home in 1989 and was never found. The missing child supporters said that they don’t give weight to jurisdictional boundaries. All that is vital to them as parents is “getting their child back”. The child advocate said this in a statement during the congressional board examination in support of the Senator’s bill.

The IRS is allowed to release tax information data on some situations such as past due student loans. This is included as a list of exceptions in the tax code in regard to privacy. She further added that “there’s no reason why missing children shouldn’t be added to the list”. There is a necessity to strike a balance connecting protecting privacy rights and finding abducted children. This the government ought to take as one of its priorities.

While usually we create articles about using an anonymous proxy to protect your online privacy, child safety trumps privacy. There is nothing that is more important than protecting children.

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Really, Do Family Members Always Need To Know Where You Are At All Times

June 20th, 2011 by Andrew Virender

Look out for the hair-raising truths about a new app that warns of an end to internet privacy. It is known as Creepy, a “geolocation information aggregator” created by Yiannis Kakavas. Many privacy rights advocates have raised their apprehension about the possible effect of this application to privacy. Should this really be a cause for worry?

Kakavas created Creepy as a package for Linux or Windows. The third package for Mac OS X is now in the process. Basically, this app makes use of social networking services in order to find a user’s location. It can do this by gathering the information provided by the user to the network and putting together these pieces of information. The software has just been launched, but has already shown its job efficiency in living up to its title.

Kakavas embedded a search utility in the app to find any individual of interest. A user can simply input the Twitter or Flickr username of that person then hit the “Geolocate Target” button. What Creepy does is download all photos or tweets that the individual has furnished online. From each of the downloaded resources, Creepy will look for the user’s location at the time the information was uploaded.

The software then aggregates every piece of information on hand to find a meaning. After processing, the user’s specific locations are presented by showing a map. Separately, these data on locations do not tell any important information. But when aggregated as a whole, it has much to tell about the “target”. It shows his or her most frequented places or hang-outs, the vicinity around his or her house, and even his or her workplace. These bits of information are now enough to make him or her susceptible to stalkers.

It only took three months for Kakavas to finish the program. He made use of accessible data found in publicly available libraries like osmgpsmap, pyexif2, and tweepy. In his mind, Kakavas believes that he has created something that will encourage people to put more worth on their privacy. He would like to enhance user recognition about the dangers of casual sharing of personal information online.

He explains that small pieces of data can be put together in order to make bigger, more meaningful information. Users are often too late to realize that it would have been better if they kept that information to themselves. The frequent ones are address, place of work, the places they hang out most often, when they are not at home, and many others.

He added further that he created Creepy also for social engineers to have a method for information gathering. Specifically for security analysts, Creepy can be used to carry out penetration testing. The information that they gather now can be used for different purposes later.

Using a software application like Creepy pinpoints where you are at all times. The opposite of this is to use an anonymous proxy to hide your IP address which masks your actual location.

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Why Do You Think This Is A Valid Trade For Your Safety Or Privacy

June 17th, 2011 by Frank Andrew Greenwald

Not knowing how to protect one’s own privacy can expose the user to unnecessary disadvantages. One of the latest technologies is the GPS, and it is now being used in cell phones and cameras. This has enabled people to locate unfamiliar places and establishments. However, privacy concerns have been raised because of the undefined restrictions on the use of this tracking technology. New models of cameras and phones are now equipped with GPS. Users enjoy its functions from simple photo taking to uploading on the internet.

The worries center on the risks involved with anybody being able to locate a user by accessing his or her cell phone data. Currently, phones can store data on the location of a person, in particular location. The phone owner’s location data can be easily mapped – where he or she had been for a period of time – with the aid of Google maps.

GPS-enabled phones or cameras store photos using EXIF data which means Exchangeable Image File. The EXIF annotation is used in almost all new models of digital cameras. This enables storage of photos to involve shutter speed, F number, exposure compensation, ISO number, date and time the image was taken, etc. The foregoing does not pose problems on privacy, but are just information about traits of the stored data. What stirs worry is that some cameras are capable of storing GPS information on the photo so that one can easily isolate where it was taken.

On the part of Apple and Google, they say that users have to be accountable for shielding their own privacy. Users cannot put the blame on technology just because it is made available. Users are the ones who can decide whether or not to use it. To get around privacy risks, users can switch off location tracking features in their phones. Google also said that the identification numbers of each phone signal cannot be traced to a specific handset. Google sets a policy of assigning a unique signal for each handset.

Some groups do not favor the idea of switching off GPS features. GPS technology has been applied in many helpful applications. New phone models are designed to operate lots of new apps that are location enabled. Not taking advantage of the benefits of this feature will make one’s phone “useless”.

What users can do is compel phone manufacturers and lawmakers to fix limits on the use of GPS data. On the other hand, the government should move faster in order to catch up with the fast-changing technology. Meanwhile, users must be responsible enough to protect one’s own privacy.

They can do this by setting sufficient limits on the sharing of data online, in particular with GPS enabled photos. One should use his or her intelligent discretion regarding when to distribute photos on any website, particularly social networking sites. This will make one in better control over his or her privacy.

It is not just phones that can reveal your location. Every time you surf the Internet you are letting others know where you are. To surf anonymously us an anonymous proxy to hide your location.

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So You Need To Keep All Private Information To Yourself

June 6th, 2011 by Joanne Rapfield

Microsoft was first to announce its opt-out technology for users of the internet. Now, Google and Mozilla have also taken concrete steps to give users the freedom of opting out of tracking cookies. Google will also improve its Chrome browser by providing an add-on. Users will soon be free from tracking cookies that monitor their movement and online behavior. From now on, tech companies will find ways to establish a balance between revenue generation and individual privacy protection.

The online advertising industry is continuously pushing for self-regulation. For a long time, they did not show positive response towards the call to give users more privacy. There have been numerous proposals for better privacy policies that protect individual privacy, and this current development will be a turnaround for users to gain more control over their personal information.

Many users just give out their personal information without being concerned of the possible consequences. They have not made it a point to read and grasp the site’s privacy policies. Others find it bothersome to go through the litany of legal terms, so they just accept the terms as they are presented. They only start to realize their mistake once unsolicited advertisements start to pop up on their screen.

Tech companies have not given up their revenue generation strategies. They still hold on to the idea that advertising fuels the web. They describe their move as meeting halfway between privacy and revenue generation through advertising. Some privacy experts see this as a marginal improvement, but acknowledge this is just the start of a better discussion on privacy.

Google’s Keep My Opt-Outs extension can be downloaded from the Chrome Web Store for free. It has features that will give users major control over their own data. Mozilla wants to soon follow with the release of a comparable tool for Firefox. The distinction is that Mozilla will base it on the Do Not Track HTTP header. Mozilla has yet to reveal the exact date for the technology to be integrated with its Firefox browser.

It could be seen that the three giant tech companies are using different approaches in their privacy tools. However, all of these are efforts at giving more privacy to internet users. It is too early to tell which among the three approaches will rule, or which one will turn out to be ineffective. Being open to discussion on privacy concerns is one good thing that is indicated by this development. Added developments can be anticipated in the remaining days of 2011. Consumers can anticipate a more reliable protection of their personal information.

So how do you make sure that all private data stays private online? Use an anonymous proxy to hide your IP address and defend your Internet identity.

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What Is The EFF – What They Do and Why You Ought To Care

June 4th, 2011 by Cindy Marshson

The EFF, or Electronic Frontier Foundation, is the first line of defense for consumers’ digital rights. It was founded as a non-profit organization in 1990 and headquartered in San Francisco, California. It is renowned for its support in digital rights, as well as its effort in defending personal freedoms and consumer rights. The EFF is funded mostly from individual donations, a considerable part of which is then used for litigation. Since its inception, the foundation has won several digital rights cases and is still battling to win more.

Its founders were John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor, who at first did not know each other. Before its formal founding, Barlow experienced how a law enforcer displayed unfamiliarity with the emerging forms of online communication. This, according to him, would put consumer civil liberties at risk. He posted an account of this experience to an online community. He was then contacted by Mitch Kapor, and that started it all.

Kapor provided the first funding for legal fees. Then, working together, they sought the services of five New York lawyers. The initial victories of their endeavor spread so fast that it attracted John Gilmore and Steve Wozniak to put in funding. After the foundation was formally formed in July 1990, Kapor, Wozniak and an anonymous sponsor provided the foundation’s initial funding.

Consumers came to know of the EFF as a non-profit organization that continually fights for freedom in the courts. Its reputation rose as it introduced and defended lawsuits on behalf of consumers and the general public. They had cases that involved large corporations and at times, even the U.S. government. It defends not only individual consumers but also new technologies that must have protection against legal risks.

Part of the EFF’s commitment is to engage and support educational activities for better awareness of emerging developments in computing and telecommunications. It advises policymakers on concerns involving free and open telecommunications. It provides assistance in the development of new technologies that will permit consumers easy use of computer-based telecommunications. The EFF stays in line with its central goal – to champion public interest on issues affecting digital rights.

To promote work in accordance with EFF’s goals and objectives, the foundation has organized two sets of awards. One is the EFF Pioneer Awards, an annual award to those individuals along the fields of electronic freedom and innovation. The other is the EFF Cooperative Computing Awards given to regular internet users who “contribute to solving huge scientific problems”.

Even though there are organizations that defend our rights, you must take matters in to your own hands regarding privacy. Use an IP Changer to mask your IP address and defend your Internet privacy.

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