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I cant promise that my tips to keep your data safe online, will eventually make you feel 100 percent secure, but one thing I assure you is that by following carefully my complete guide to online privacy and making it a regular practice, you’ll make it a lot harder for hackers to read your e-mail and IMs, fill your computer with spyware and track your Web-surfing habits.

Total web safety is nearly impossible; the Internet is about communication, and communication is essentially public. But that’s not to say that you can’t manage a sound level of online data privacy: when two people murmur to each other alone in a room, that communication is only public in the mind of the paranoiac.

The trick, then, is to not ask for a fantasy like vague ideal of complete online safety. It’s to coach ourselves to cover our lips and whisper online: to be in touch only with the people and Web sites we trust, while making it as complicated as possible for people we don’t want to overhear. We need to make our laptops safer, organize our outbound traffic, encrypt our information and anonymize our online identity. It takes persistence to avoid the interfering bots, data-mining spies and other busybodies of the digital world, but it is feasible to set up a sensible amount of personal space on the world’s most public medium – internet

Confine To Your Box

In practical terms, the major pressures to your privacy and safety online aren’t external. You’re less exposed from a rogue hacker trying to spy your PC from a bunker in Serbia than you are from the programs that you’ve already installed on your PC and the careless Internet surfing habits you may have adapted over the years.

Many computers are filled with spyware—sneaky programs that watch your computing habits and sniff out your personal information in a sarcastic manner, then pass data about you on to third parties without your awareness and permission. Windows users tolerate the impact of this spying, and consequently should know how to stay safe online. The first line of guard against spyware to keep your financial data safe online, is a firewall, a program that can put off unapproved programs from accessing the Internet and phoning home with your information. Windows users have many choices, but a crucial firewall is integrated into both XP and Vista. Check in your Control Panel under Security settings. Your firewall should be on by default, if it is not, you should turn it on. Windows users seeking more refined third-party solution should think about Check Point’s Zone Alarm Pro, which lets you more strict control for keeping research data safe. Also built into Windows Vista and XP is Microsoft’s own spyware scanner, Windows Defender, which can verify to see if your computer has already been accessed by malware and can eliminate those harmful programs to keep data safe online. Again, third-party options are plentiful—my personal favorites are Lavasoft’s AdAware and Spybot Search and Destroy from Safer-Networking.org, all of which help keep online data safe and secure.

Because of its comparatively low market share, the Mac OS is a less succulent bonus for the serious spy, but no operating system is really protected. how to keep your online data safe on a public computer is not at all difficult if you know the basics like Vista, OS X has a integral firewall to keep external entities from being in touch with your computer (open System Preferences and check under Security for settings). But to defend against programs on your Mac sending info out and for better internet safety, try installing LittleSnitch, which alerts you to any outbound traffic and underlines the offending program. And to search your Mac for impending spyware invasions, try the free Trend Micro HouseCall online scanner.

Ultimately, the major security threats to your online privacy are your own bad habits that make your online safety information exposed to hackers. As computers become more connected and more information is stored online, it becomes even more vital that we tag along excellent password practices. That means no pet names, no names of kids or favorite sports teams either—and indeed don’t make your password “password” it’s the first thing hackers test out. To learn to make more powerful passwords, try some of your favorites at Password Meter, a Web utility that checks the strength of your passwords as you type them in and rates their safety level. Remembering passwords is a tough job but the additional effort required is a sign of their innate strength. Carrying around passwords in your head is like a keychain to your virtual confidential property.

Passwords, firewalls and spyware checkers will figure out an embankment around your computer, but just as barriers locks and safety measures won’t keep out a strong-minded thief; these digital tactics can not be up to snuff. If you need bulletproof defense, the best protection is to encrypt your drive. Encryption algorithms are the same kind of stuff that protects the most privileged and confidential government documents and business secrets. The open-source [http://www*truecrypt*org] TrueCrypt encryption software is free for download and can encrypt files on the fly as you drag and drop them onto the drive. You should also take care to encrypt your Wi-Fi router. Select WPA encryption if your router has the choice. This is far safer than the older WEP option. This will credibly confirm that the only person accessing your network is you!

Securing the E-Mails

It’s very important to know how to secure your emails for the higher levels of online privacy you want to achieve. The most insecure thing most of us do over the Internet every day is hit “reply.” When you send an e-mail, you are sending a plain text document that goes through a maze of innumerable computer networks before finally plopping into the recipient’s mailbox. At any point during that trip your e-mail can be read as a plain text file by anyone who seizes it. Think of it as sending a postcard through the mail. Your message will get where it’s meant to go, but there are a lot of mailmen who could read it along the way. Encryption is like a wrapping for e-mail … a cover wrapped in chains and a padlock.

The easiest way to confirm your e-mail is encrypted is to install Mozilla’s Thunderbird e-mail software and the brilliant [] Enigmail extension. Once the extension has been set up, you will have produced a public key (to be shared with people who you desire to be able to send you encrypted emails) and a private key (which decrypts incoming e-mails meant for you). Anyone else trying to read your e-mail will just observe a spool of alphanumeric claptrap.

But even encrypted e-mail discloses some info about where it came from. To remove your e-mail’s data trail, use an unidentified remailer. These services hide your letters in a total pall of confidentiality, making it unworkable for a recipient to discover things about you from procedural information stored in the e-mail header.

Secure Your Browser

When you visit a Web page, how can you be confident that any information a site is saving is information you like to be giving out? How can you assure that any information you send or receive is encrypted? And how can you make your web traffic unidentified so that even your Internet service provider isn’t quite sure what you’re up to?

To keep the sites you visit from tracking your behavior elsewhere, check your browser’s options and turn off cookies—remember, though that this might immobilize some features for instance Amazon suggestions and can decrease the exactness level of some Web search engines that process results based on your previous choices.

But how can you confirm your ISP isn’t hacking on your browsing habits? How can you check that not even your destination Web site knows who you are? A favorite tool amongst online rights activists, journalists and political dissidents, the Tor Project is a network of computers that lets you encrypt your web surfing by just installing a software package and configuring it.

Protect Your IM and Bittorrent

Outside of browsing and e-mailing, the two leading Internet applications are instant messaging and Bittorrent. Your activity here can be protected as well.

Instant messaging is an easily hacked application, but it is just as easily encrypted by downloading the free, multi service IM app GAIM and installing the GAIM encryption plug-in. Anyone you like to IM will also need to have the GAIM encryption package installed, but it will keep your messages protected on the way.

Certainly, the talk about privacy comes to Bittorrent, the well-liked file-sharing system. Bittorrent’s reputation is hard-earned as the premiere conduit application for content piracy, and we don’t need to repeat you that online theft and distributing copyrighted material is against the law. Plus, the torrent sites are directly watched by representatives of the music and film industry for verification of theft. If you are one of the Bittorrenters who are using the system for authorized file sharing, then you may not value being monitored like all those other unlawful people, and you can do something to keep your business to yourself. Switch over to the Vuze Bittorrent software and install the SafePeer plug-in, which will mechanically put you off from connecting to a known list of snooping IPs.

In the end, none of these steps will stop a gritty snooper. There is always a point of malfunction in any communication system: If you are really worried about individuals reading your e-mail and your chats, the only truly protected thing to do is not use the Internet at all. It’s the same, even in whispering—the only way to assure you’ll never be heard is to never open your mouth in the first place.

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