This installment starts a series on browser safety online. Let me open with a question: Do you practice safe browsing? Put another way, Do you know what safe browsing is? Or darkly recast, Do you have a clue what’s unsafe?
As with any field, we have to start with a taxonomy. What are the threats of browsing?
Okay, first: your browser and search histories. Your clickpath is a highly personal piece of information. Except you usually can’t get to the records that advertisers keep about you, so you’re at an immediate disadvantage. That clickpath (your browse and search histories), at the very least, reveal reams about your problems, relationships and interests. Maybe you don’t care about advertisers targeting you, and that’s reasonable. The troubling thing is, investigations by, say, the federal government may reveal things you’d rather not share, or even result in catastrophic incorrect assumptions about you. You don’t want the NSA drawing any funny conclusions from your Lawrence of Arabia fetish, do you?
Second: your browser fingerprint. Huh? Browser fingerprint? Yup, it’s got one. And it can be used to identify you personally and specifically as a visitor to a site.
Third: bugware. I’m talking about everything from those single-pixel gifs that advertisers hang onto pages so they can track you, to that foolish agreement you signed with Google or Yahoo or MSN that lets them track your every move while you are logged in to their service. You signed no such thing? If you have Gmail or Yahoo mail or MSN mail, yes you did. Read the EULA and weep.
Let me talk about issue one, your searches and browsing clickpath. Let me pick on Google for an example (they make such a good example of so many things). Take a look at “What Google Knows About You” at
Allow me to strenuously point out the issues: Google has no clear guidelines on what they can collect or how they can share it, aside from a recent decision to anonymize data after it’s been kept a certain time. They won’t tell you what information they have about you; that right is reserved exclusively for advertisers. You can’t correct errors, clarify misconceptions or provide countervailing information. You’re just plain under the microscope, and if some agency decides to dissect you, you can’t do a damn thing about it.
So just in the realm of this particular issue, what can you do? Read “6 Ways to Protect Your Privacy on Google” at
Take this advice seriously. When you are online, you are naked in public. Act like it. Be modest. Don’t draw attention to yourself. Disappear. Because someday, somebody will be hauling you into court to explain something you said online, or something you “Liked” on Facebook, or someone who is your “friend” on some service.
Or even me, for this article.