How much are you giving away online?

Be aware of your data when your browsing the web

Did you know that whenever you browse the web, you leave behind information about you and your computer out there in cyberspace? For instance, the town or city you live in can be readily identified from your computer’s ip address. (Every computer that logs onto the internet is given a unique ip address). Ok, to find out where you actually live within your town is far from easy, but still…

What browser you use, whether certain applications are installed on your computer, even what web sites you have visited during your current browsing session are all items of information that can be harvested by owners of visited web sites. Normally this information is used for purely innocent or, at worse, mildly commercial purposes, but its still a revelation to many exactly what can be found out about you without your even knowing.

Take a trip to www.browserspy.dk/ and see exactly what information websites can collect from even the most of casual and innocent of visits.

A lot of sites use cookies to collect information. Cookies are small pieces of information that are downloaded by your browser and stored on your computer. When you visit a website, it will check to see whether you have a cookie already stored on your computer. If so, your browser will pass it back to the website. Now don’t get too alarmed. Most cookies are purely innocent and store information such as site preferences. They are intended to make your browsing experience that bit more pleasurable and personal. Its by the use of cookies for instance, that sites like Amazon can greet you by your first name when you revisit.

So, what can or should you do about all this? Well, the fact that you are aware information is collected every time you surf the net is a good start. You can certainly keep you browsing history private. The latest versions of the major browsers all have a privacy mode. In Firefox 4, click on the ‘start private browsing’ option from the tools menu. If you use Internet Explorer 9, click CTRL, SHIFT and P to start your InPrivate browsing session. During these sessions your browser will not keep track of your browsing habits, sites visited, cookies, temporary internet files and so on.

If you want to clear out information already stored on your computer from previous surfing sessions, you will need to delete your browsing history. In IE9, hit CTRL, SHIFT and Delete to bring up the clear history box. In Firefox 4, select ‘clear recent history’ from the Tools menu. Remember, however, that deleting everything will include stored passwords and log on details to sites you may well want to keep, so be a bit selective on how much you get rid of.

Being aware of what is going on behind the scenes is always a good starting point for safe web browsing. Happy Surfing!