The usual corporate/government modus operandi in responding to situations that expose their own wrongdoing is to deny, distract and cover up. However, in a move rarely seen among global Internet mega-companies caught with their pants down, heads have finally rolled this week at AOL in connection with the deliberate publication of users’ private search data on the AOL website (see last week’s column at www.normantranscript.com or www.davemoorecomputers.com).
I’ve been begging people for years to stop using AOL. Their Internet service has never been very good, and the ridiculous software packages that they insist you install are invasive, intrusive and use way too many of your computer’s limited resources. In fact, AOL’s new “Active Virus Shield” requires that you allow adware and spam email into your system! The same can be said for most of the software packages provided by major Internet service providers. But, I digress; back to AOL’s head-chopping ceremony.
Hired amidst great fanfare less than a year ago, AOL Chief Technical Officer Maureen Govern has “resigned” and two of her underlings that took part in the privacy breech have been fired. While these departures are generally regarded as a good move by AOL, the overall situation begs the much larger question: since the corporate/Internet/government cartel (either through carelessness, incompetence or a lust for power) can’t seem to keep from spilling private information all over the landscape, what are regular Internet guys and gals supposed to do?
One of the biggest privacy complaints about major Internet search sites such as Google, AOL, MSN and Yahoo is that they keep extensive and often permanent records, called “logs,” of the who, what, where and when of everything that’s entered into that little search box. In addition, these sites insert “cookies” into your computer that track your Internet activity. Log and cookie files such as these have been used as, among other things, evidence to throw political dissidents into communist Chinese prisons. Fortunately, there are some easy-to-use tools for those who wish to keep their Internet usage to themselves.
First on the list is Scroogle (www.scroogle.org), brought to you by Public Information Research, Inc., of San Antonio, Texas. Use Scroogle instead of your usual search site, and you’ll no longer be leaving behind a trail of search-term records or access logs, and you won’t have to fill your computer up with tracking cookies.
Those who desire a higher level of protection should install Tor (http://tor.eff.org), which is an anonymous Internet communication system. Designed to work most effectively with Mozilla’s Firefox browser (which is what you should be using anyway, instead of Yahoo/AOL/Cox/MSN/Internet Explorer), communications are bounced around a distributed network of servers, protecting you from websites that build profiles of your interests, local eavesdroppers that read your data or learn what sites you visit, and other Internet nasties. Installing the complete Tor/Privoxy/Vidalia bundle along with the Torbutton plugin is easy, and will give you the maximum amount of protection with the minimum amount of hassle.