Invasion of Privacy

   When a hacker, cracker, or attacker connects to your computer, the threat to your security is immediate and personal. But threats to your online privacy are more subtle, and different users have different reactions to features in Windows and Internet Explorer that deliberately or unintentionally reveal personal information about you.

  Internet Explorer, for example, reveals extensive details about your browser—which version you're using, which optional components you've installed, and which site contained the link that brought you to the current page. It also betrays a few details that might be able to help the owner of a Web site pin down your location: your IP address and time zone, for instance.

  Those details are relatively minor and are primarily intended to improve communication between your Web browser and the sites you visit. But another feature that's common to all modern browsers is considerably more controversial. Cookies are tiny data files that contain persistent bits of information about you and your interaction with a particular Web site. They're also a source of raging controversy among people who are passionate about privacy. Some points about Cookies are listed below:

  • Cookies can contain personal information only if you provide it. Most cookies simply create a serial number that allows the Web site to recognize that you're a repeat visitor. If you enter personal details—by entering an online contest or filling in a registration form, for instance—the cookie can keep track of those details and match them with your browsing history from previous visits to the same site. Cookies are especially helpful for online shopping applications and at sites where you need to establish your identity for access.
  • Internet Explorer 6 (an upgrade for Windows 2000 users, a standard part of Windows XP) includes a Privacy dialog box that lets you control cookies en masse or individually.
  • The most troubling threats to privacy come from third-party cookies, which allow advertisers and marketing companies to track your movements between different sites that include elements (such as banner ads) from that third party's site. Internet Explorer 6 allows you to handle third-party cookies using different rules than those that apply to cookies associated directly with a site. A variety of add-on utilities for Internet Explorer and other browsers let you exercise even more precise control over which sites are allowed to set cookies on your computer.
  • An emerging standard called the Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) allows Web sites to define the privacy standards they follow and publish that policy in a compact form as part of their Web site. Internet Explorer 6 can read this compact privacy policy and compare its settings to the preferences you entered. In theory, at least, this feature should let you automatically handle cookies at some sites.

    •    Another way of intrusion on your privacy is the browser and its history keeps a record of every site you visit—going back, by default, almost three weeks. Anyone who has physical access to your computer can examine the list of sites you've visited and learn a lot about you—perhaps more than you'd like them to know. Sweeping away this evidence of where you've been in cyberspace is more difficult than it appears, because traces of your movements are scattered all over your hard drive.

     
     
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