Online privacy tips: 3 ways to control your digital footprint - harrisuner1936

Christine asked astir her digital footprint: "What can I exercise approximately it."

Ilk real footprints, your digital tracks leave a record of where you've been and what you've done. They register your searches, what you bought, which sites you visited, and the opinions you've expressed on social media.

Many for-profit companies, both legitimate and criminal, can spend a penny a profit out of knowing you better. Governments also like to enter the act.

So it's a practiced melodic theme to get control of your digital footmark.

[Have a tech question? Ask PCWorld Contributing Editor Lincoln Spector. Send your inquiry to answer@pcworld.com .]

In any online services you're victimization, check the concealment settings. On Facebook, e.g., you'll find them by clicking the lock icon in the upper berth-liberal corner of the screen and going through the various options.

But that's not enough. Before you post your condition, re-probe what you'ray expression and showing and ask yourself if this is something you'd want your parents, your kids, your in-Pentateuch, your boss, or the IRS to read. And past make sure you're sending information technology only if to the people you want to see it.

2. Use two-fold identities

The information you share with one website can be combined with data from another, creating a more hearty track record of who you are. To protect yourself, render to be different people at different sites.

Few sites identify you by name, but a lot identify you by email plow. So manipulation different addresses at different sites. You may true want to consider different credit cards.

Smudge, a free Chrome and Firefox extension, allows you to mask your email address. When you enroll your electronic mail address in a web form, Blur gives you the selection to create a new, random address instead. That address forwards to your real direct, which the sender never sees.

If you're willing to pay $39 a year—operating theatre $79 for ternion years—Blur Exchange premiu wish also mask telephone and accredit card numbers.

3. Crop in private

Your browser knows an awful lot about you, and it shares that information with a great many strangers. But there are methods of dominant that.

Your web browser almost for sure has a private mode where information technology South Korean won't save cookies, searches, OR history. In Chrome, it's named New concealed window. In Internet Adventurer and Bound, it's called InPrivate Browse . In Firefox, it's New Private Windowpane . But it's not perfect. Your ISP can still come across where you've been, and every site you visit volition still see your IP speech.

An still wagerer solution is to use the Tor browser, which hides your IP address and encrypts everything for most of the travel 'tween your PC and whomever you're communicating with. You can call back of it atomic number 3 a very private private mode.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/419064/online-privacy-tips-3-ways-to-control-your-digital-footprint.html

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