This page is a support center to introduce you to the concerns about Online Privacy and to give you links to some resources to help you deal with this issue.
Also see Email Wire Tap Possible in Outlook or Netscape for another aspect of the invasion of privacy problem.
Directory to sections in this page -
"Spyware" - a hidden piece of software that is distributed without your knowledge with a program you buy and has the capability of reporting user names, passwords, every file downloaded from the Internet is becoming a nuisance. Especially when it is distributed with children's programs. One program - often called a firewall - for protection from this problem is -
Another firewall is Gibson's Shield's Up -
A recent editorial about privacy issues that makes "interesting (and scary) reading:"
The National Institute on Media and the Family has ratings on electronic game and privacy issues -
An interesting perspective on many aspects of entire privacy question, covering such areas as public policy, personal identity, technical ramifications, modern economics, and institutional inertia, is -
A service that claims to preserve your online privacy is Zero Knowledge Systems' Freedom 1.0. This program claims to preserve online privacy for web browsing, chatting, e-mail, and newsgroups. The program basically strips your personal information, encrypts the data, routes the message through several affiliated ISPs and then decrypts everything and finally delivers the the original message to its destination -
Another group with concerns about privacy is Inktomi, a maker of search engine programs -
The following sites - groups concerned about this area - give you much more background on some of the concerns and what is or is not being done to protect your online privacy.
Especially recommended is the Electronic Privacy Information Center which has extensive discussions about this area -
The following sites - advertisers, many of them members of the National Advertising Initiative, and involved in Internet advertising - have policy statements on their Internet advertising that give you much more background on what they think is protecting your online privacy.
For some pointers on what you can do to about personal privacy in general, check the following links -
Contact all the following credit record companies to periodically get your current credit record for checking -
For law enforcement assistance, contact -
For consumer oriented information -
For questions about such general consumer areas as credit reports or debt repayment -
Further information is available from the Americans for the Advancement of Retired Persons (AARP) -