Privacy Index

At the dawn of 21st century, advances in technology endanger our privacy in ways never before imagined. Direct marketers and retailers track our every purchase; surveillance cameras observe our movements; mobile phones will soon report our location to those who want to track us; government eavesdroppers listen in on private communications; misused medical records turn our bodies and our histories against us; and linked databases assemble detailed consumer profiles used to predict and influence our behaviour.

Privacy - the most basic of our civil rights - is in grave peril.

Privacy in everyday life is nothing new. When you buy something at the grocery store, no one is going to ask you for some form of ID, and when you send a snail-mail letter, the Post Office doesn't check if the return address is valid. And who wouldn't be very upset if they found out that the mailman had been reading their mail?

However, on the Internet privacy is regarded a lot less normal. Messages are sent as clear text, so that everyone with a little knowledge can read them, and there is no built-in way to prevent someone else from forging something in your name, so that you can't prove it wasn't you. Even worse, data on your own hard disk can be examined by everyone who has access to your office or room.

Data on your own computer is also not protected. Unless you take special precautions, everyone who wanders by during your lunch break can copy and read all files on your computer. There are also many ways in which sensitive data can end up on your disk without you knowing it.

ePrompter
Free Email Retrieval and Notification Programme
ePrompter is an easy to use email notifier that automatically checks up to sixteen password protected email accounts. It allows you to compose, forward and reply to the messages that have been retrieved for you. Your forwards and replies will be sent back through the account that the messages were retrieved from.

Cookies
What are cookies? How do cookies work? Why are cookies useful?
We tell you here.

Spam
What is it? How do they do it? What do I do about it?
You have several options.

Spyware
Spyware is part of an overall public concern about privacy on the Internet. Spyware is any technology that aids in gathering information about a person or organization without their knowledge. Spyware is any software that aids in gathering information which employs a user's Internet connection in the background (the so-called "backchannel") without their knowledge or explicit permission.

Privacy : Epic
EPIC is a public interest research center in Washington, D.C. It was established in 1994 to focus public attention on emerging civil liberties issues and to protect privacy. EPIC works in association with Privacy International, an international human rights group based in London, UK and is also a member of the Global Internet Liberty Campaign, the Internet Free Expression Alliance, the Internet Privacy Coalition, the Internet Democracy Project, and the Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD).

Privacy : 12 Ways to Protect Your Online Privacy
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading civil liberties organization working to protect rights in the digital world. This document, released in April 2002, is as informative and accurate today as it was then. Even though we face many more dangers today, the basics have not changed.

Privacy : Privacy.net
Internet banner ad companies begin to track users on the Internet by linking cookies to personal information databases. See how it is done. A demonstration has been set up with 27 web sites in a fictional ad network. Visit several of the sites, register at one, and see how your activity is tracked across the entire network and linked to your identity.

Privacy : Protect your identity
Did you know that detailed information about your system is automatically provided to every web site you visit? This information can be used by hackers to exploit your computer and by companies to track your activities on the Internet. Why put up with this invasion of your privacy and security? Anonymizers hide revealing information from the web sites you visit, allowing you to surf the web anonymously. How does it work? Each time you visit a web site through The Cloak, they forward your request to the remote web site from their server. The web site responds to that server, and they forward the response back to you. To the web site, it appears as though the request came from them, not from you.

Email Security and Privacy with NO Downloads
Tired of worrying about who's reading your e-mail?
Next time you have a message to send, try this free online service.
Not only does it allow you to encrypt your e-mail, it is also able to set to self-destruct.