Protect your privacy while surfing the internet

Cookies
Another form of internet tracking is performed using cookies. These are tiny snippets of information downloaded by your web browser as part of day-to-day web browsing and stored on your computer.

When you visit a website it checks if you have already have a cookie and, if so, your browser passes it back. Most cookies are used to store such things as site preferences and, as such, are benign (if you’re a regular visitor, for example, the Amazon online store uses a cookie to greet you by your first name when you visit).

Cookies don’t pose much of a threat unless they’re misused, but since they can be used to link an IP address with a particular website, they do create some privacy implications.

Web ‘analytics’ services such as the one offered by Google, for example, use anonymous cookies to track how visitors interact with websites: how they came to visit a particular page, how long they spent looking at it, which links they clicked and so on.

Again, other than an IP address, there’s nothing here that can be used to uniquely identify you, but for many people the very idea of websites keeping tabs on you is slightly unnerving.

On a similar note, try clicking the ‘CSS Exploit’ link on the Browserspy website. If you’re unlucky you may find that the site can identify which other websites you’ve visited recently. This information is available thanks to an error in some web browsers, and allows sites to tell where else you’ve been surfing.

Clearing cookies
In Internet Explorer 8, cookies are managed by clicking Tools, Internet Options and then Privacy. The sliding control lets you set which cookies are accepted.

The Medium setting is sufficient for most purposes, but a higher setting can solve problems with intrusive adverts and prevent you from leaving yourself logged into a website when you browse elsewhere.

Sometimes higher settings can prevent websites from working properly, so be prepared to adjust this setting if needed.

Caches
The final piece in the internet anonymity puzzle is your computer itself. Mostly as a matter of convenience, your web browser tracks much of what you do online and stores the information on your hard disk, including the websites you’ve visited, images you’ve downloaded (both intentionally, and those used in web pages you’ve visited) and the passwords you’ve saved.

This information is only intended for use by you and your web browser, but that’s not to say someone else can’t see it.

Physical access to your computer is the easiest way for someone to dig through the information saved by your web browser and anyone who’s had their computer stolen would do well to change all their internet passwords as soon as possible.

Use someone else’s computer, and they too can also see what you’ve been up to online. This is not a problem if it’s your partner or a friend but you might not want your employer seeing details of your personal life such as what you’re spending and where, and you certainly wouldn’t want any such information to be visible to strangers in an internet café. Fortunately all this information is easy to clear out.

Clear out your browser
Web browsers make life easy by remembering every web page you’ve visited and speed up surfing by saving certain content on your hard disk so it doesn’t need to be downloaded several times.

Unfortunately, this also makes web browsers great at giving away sensitive information, particularly if they’re used on a computer that someone else has access to.

If you want to remove this information, no matter which computer you’re using, it’s always possible to clear out the browser’s storage.

In Internet Explorer 8, click Page then Delete Browsing History. This pops up a dialogue box that lets you wipe some or all of the browser’s saved data.

In Firefox press the Control, Shift and Delete keys together to bring up the necessary options.