Protecting Yourself Online, The Internet tracks everything.

The importance of online privacy is not only about keeping personal information safe, it’s also about keeping your personal location, from prying eyes. It’s also about keeping you identity safe. Identity theft is one of the increasing problems with internet use. So what can you do.

1. Cookie Management, Cleaning Expired Cookies.

A cookie is information left on your machine from websites you visit, this information is not always harmful, but contains some information about your visit, this information can be cleaned up by finding the remove cookies option in each browser type, or you can try using a shareware tool like www.ccleaner.com which has built in support for most browser configurations, like Google Chrome, IE, FireFox, Optra and Safari as well as some Windows Locations that store your browsers surfing history.

2. Use a Browser with a built in Privacy Mode

A feature showing up in new Browser versions is a Privacy Mode, or incognito.
This mode makes sure that your browser doesn’t record any information or store any cookies on your machine, and removes anything in use after the termination of the browser process.

3. Make a DUMMY Email Address

Keep a dummy e-mail account for signing up to ANYTHING on the internet, that isn’t a brick a motor company. It’s suggested that giving out you email address to anyone that you don’t trust, is a bad idea. Creating a Hotmail account or a Gmail account for this will save your primary email address a lot of spam, and keep you’re mailbox identity safe.

4. Hide you’re IP address.

You can do this a couple of ways. Now you can jump to any site using a free proxy server, which can be done by configuring a Proxy in your browser config. Or by using a site like www.hidemyass.com, or you can install a VPN program like http://www.hotspotshield.com that will automatically switch your IP address through the VPN.

The issue with these FREE services is that they come with banner ads.

Pay for a VPN service with an anonymous credit card (Visa Cash Card), and you’ll be banner free.

                

After a few days working with Chrome, hits and misses.

Four days of Chrome. Needs a little polish, but has potential.


Googles Chrome is beta, and beta means (unfinished), but after a few days of using Chrome, it wanted to shine. And at times it did.

• Reporting sites that heavily used java to display, where screaming fast compared to IE7 and FireFox.


• I just loved the fact that i could uncouple the tabs from one Chrome application process to a new process and then reintegrate the two. Just drag the tab off into a clear desktop area, it's that simple.


• Incognito is a great idea, Great for Banking sites and places you want to make sure your internet tracks don't get left hanging around.


• The Super Omnibar (Address and Search combined) Made moving around my address navigating simple and easy to use, with my bookmarks showing stars as I typed away. What it does is language match what your typing. Try two words or more for searches as they pattern match googles keywords with higher success than singles. Sites match as you type the domain names.

• Easy access to clearing browsing data, just under the tool wrench is handy


• I actually find the thumbnails really handy, and with them showing on any new tab creation, it was super fast to load up all my sites.


• Application shortcuts on the desktop are great for applications i want to make sure I've closed after use. Also they start in it's own process.


• The downloading engine, different as it is was a little more responsive

Now I don't like a couple of things,

• The fact that any site that has cert issues, screams the red wall of google warning.


• Hotmail makes me click the continue using unsupported browser link


• Saving password are open to anyone walking by an unlocked computer within a few clicks and the don't submit the form on use in some cases that all worked great with my SSO integrated with IE.


• For all the bloggers out there, drag scrolling isn't working. When you try to scroll in a text box by draging to the bottom of the window and have the rich edit control scroll, well it doesn't.
• Rendering isn't 100% as the example is from this site, the two link lists (blogger widgets) have no style float attribute but are acting like they do.

Overall this has potential, it's a pretty great first version release, with some cool new ideas, different takes on older ones, and polishing others. Now fit in some way to integrate some Firefox tools than it's going to rock the browser world.

                

Google's Chrome vs Hotmail - Fails Browser Supported

 As with any new browser, Microsoft spits out it's not supported message. When navigating to the Hotmail live page using Chrome you recieve the upgrade your web browser message, with the top three players being supported shown. You can continue on using the link provided underneath the other browsers and everything works as expected over in Microsoft Live land. Maybe the folks at Google should send a few happy smiles MS's way and get rid of that evil "your not worthy message". 

                

It's available now - Chrome out in Beta Style.

Get the new Beta Google Chrome browser. Download Site

Our first response to the NEW browser on the block!

• Okay so you decide to give it a try. Well I haven't decided if it's better or worse than IE 7 or FireFox.. but what I like is that it pulled my IE favs. Wish it asked me if I wanted to pull my Firefox ones.
• The rendering isn't as fast as I'd of hoped. Firefox does a better job on this front.
• Flash support seems to be seamless with the current install.
• Passwords saved from IE will import into the Google password list.
• One box for the address bar and get suggestions for both search and web pages is pretty.
• Thumbnails of your top sites shows up when you open a new tab
• Shortcuts for your apps to get desktop shortcuts to launch your favorite web applications.

Here is the info from inside Chrome about Incognito:

You've gone incognito. Pages you view in this window won't appear in your browser history or search history, and they won't leave other traces, like cookies, on your computer after you close the incognito window. Any files you download or bookmarks you create will be preserved, however. Going incognito doesn't affect the behavior of other people, servers, or software. Be wary of:
Websites that collect or share information about you
Internet service providers or employers that track the pages you visit
Malicious software that tracks your keystrokes in exchange for free smileys
Surveillance by secret agents
People standing behind you

Learn more about incognito browsing.

                

Google goes Chrome! In comic style

Faster! Dettached, V8 Java Open Source, Incognito and available tommorrow, Google has announced the Google Chrome Beta project in Comic fashion. To check out the features in comic book style, go here.

What is the Chrome Browser Project, well another browser. Will it take any sort of browser market share. Yet to be seen. The coolest feature is the Most Visited thumbnail, Google homepage. Moving the tabs above the address bar, ooohhh who thunk that one up.. must of been a weeks worth of coding!!

                

Sleipnir - Horrible Name for a browser, but cool formatting options

Sleipnir released version 2.7.2 in hopes of gaining a larger market share in the internet browser application market. You still have your tabbed browsing, and lots of customization. Download location

Sleipnir Overview
Sleipnir is designed to be a highly customizable browser that you can configure to suit your individual needs. With Sleipnir, you can create your ideal browser by changing the design, skin, and visual appearance. You can also add custom functionality to Sleipnir with a wide range of plugins and user scripts. Users love Seipnir for it's unique blend of high-performance and customizability.

Sleipnir lets you choose.
Do you have IE and Firefox installed? Sleinir allows you to quickly switch between Trident and Gecko based formatting engines. Trident is IE and Gecko is Firefox. So basically, if you like the way a site looks using one over the other, it's now simple to switch to it, using one browser application.