International privacy Day: protect your online privacy

Today is International Privacy Day. I always wonder why we always have one day to celebrate something (peace, literacy, freedom, privacy, etc.), when these are subjects we should daily consider and honor. I suppose these International Days act as reminders to the forgetful ones, for the importance and weight of these ideals.

So International Privacy Day. Online privacy is a very vague subject. The International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) has published some very interesting presentations explaining how can our privacy be harmed and how we can protect ourselves. Although researches show that our online privacy concerns have increased google points out that

70% of Europeans did not understand how their personal data was being protected.

So let’s see what one can learn and do on a day like this.

Privacy Harms

Intrusions: When “they” come to your space to tell you what to do or where to point your attention. In cyberspace, SPAM is the most common example.
Information Collection: Sadly, our world today. Visual surveillance we experience in our everyday life and don’t complain anymore. Of course asking for private information is considered a privacy breach (do your remember the TorrentSpy trial?).
Information Processing: The curse of web 2.0. We are willingly opening our private data to anyone. Data mining can be considered as the mildest consequence. Letting marketers to develop patterns and decide if you are a good customer (if not, how can you become one).
Information Dissemination: When services or software disclose more information about you as they should.

Protecting your Privacy

There are four basic ways to protect your privacy online:

Technology: use firewalls and spam-filters
Law: The CAN-SPAM act; an act which establishes certain requirements for those who send commercial email. For example using false headers is illegal.
Markets: You choose a safe mail provider or a safe Operating System

Of course there are simple actions you can do yourself now to increase the protection of your private data and your system.

6 simple ways to protect yourself

Delete cookies after each session. Cookies are a nasty thing. They are the trace of your surf activity on your computer. This means that anyone can see which sites you lately visited. But some sites require cookies to work. So be smarter. Customize your browser to delete the cookies after you close him.In firefox just go to Preferences and to the “Privacy” Tab. Have the ‘accept cookies from sites’ clicked, but in the ‘Keep until:’ chose ‘I close Firefox’. If you think some cookies are really nasty and you don’t want them at all, just add them in the ‘Exceptions…’
Delete your web history. While you’re at the same tab (Privacy) select the ‘Always clear my private data when I close Firefox’ box. On ‘Settings’ you can customize that. I Clear everything apart from my saved passwords. (Remember, if you have saved passwords on firefox, ALWAYS keep a master password)
Change your passwords often. This might seem like an extreme measure, but it is very important one. Most users (me included) are participating in so many communities, they just have one password for all. The password for gmail, wordpress, ubuntu, yahoo, mixx is just the same. I know it is difficult changing the password for all these services, but it is necessary. I learned it first hand: Almost 3 years ago, while I was still running Windows, I logged in to my MSN Messanger just to see my username changed to “I have been hacked…yeah truly”. I immediately changed the password of my hotmail (and eventually stopped using it) and all other services I currently used. Or just get an OpenID and wait until it gets more popular.
Hide your IP when surfing. There are software that can hide your IP. Although, it is not 100% guaranteed hidden IP it is the best you can get. You also get this great feeling of freedom. Some free software to hide your IP are Tor and Smarthide.
Read The Terms of Service. I know it is boring. But sometimes you will find something in the Terms of Service that goes completely against your beliefs.
Use Encryption: Don’t protect your privacy only from marketers and spammers but also from identity theft, surveillance, system crackers or even espionage. A good place to start is the Pretty Good Privacy project. It is absolutely free and it runs almost in every computer (I think even Atari!)