Part of being a prepared individual is keeping a low profile. I don’t heavily emphasize privacy issues on SurvivalBlog, but I do recommend that you learn how to fly under the radar, just on general principle. My philosophy: Don’t leave big paper trails or bit trails. An interesting article recently appeared at Wired News, titled “How to Foil Search Engine Snoops” See: http://wired.com/news/technology/0,70051-0.html?tw=wn_tophead_2
For greater privacy, the author recommends using either the Firefox PC browser or the Safari Macintosh browser. He states: “In Firefox, you can go into the privacy preference dialog and open Cookies. From there you can remove your search engine cookies and click the box that says: “Don’t allow sites that set removed cookies to set future cookies. In Safari, try the free and versatile PithHelmet plug-in. [See: http://culater.net/software/PithHelmet/PithHelmet.php] You can let some cookies in temporarily, decide that some can last longer or prohibit some sites, including third-party advertisers, from setting cookies at all.”
He also recommends: “If you are doing any search you wouldn’t print on a T-shirt, consider using Tor, The Onion Router. [See: http://www.onion-router.net/] An EFF-sponsored service, Tor helps anonymize your web traffic by bouncing it between volunteer servers.”
The article also mentions the tried and true (but slow) Anonymizer.com. See: http://www.anonymizer.com.
OBTW, if any of you techno gurus would be so kind, I’d greatly appreciate a summary article about Internet privacy to post on SurvivalBlog.com. You might even win our non-fiction writing contest. (The prize is a four day course certificate at Front Sight!)