privacy • David Leonard - Computer Support in London

Will Computers Change Us?

May 182013

I was recently setting up a new computer for a client, and kept seeing Google ads relating to a particular theme

There was nothing wrong with the theme, but it did relate to something highly personal, and I wondered if the client realised that this gave an indication of something that had clearly been on her mind recently. I do realise – and appreciate – that my computer clients place trust in me with respect to the parts of their data that I can’t help seeing, but there must be many things that we treat as belonging very much to our private sphere that are now “leaking out” into a more public space. Even within the confines of her own home, this client may have preferred other members of her family, for instance, not to know what had been on her mind recently.

As time goes on, this sort “leaking” or “bleeding” of our private pre-occupations into wider domains is likely to increase, thanks to computers and the internet. I know I’ve banged on about this kind of thing before, but this incident set me to thinking about how all this tracking and information-gathering may change us as humans and society as a whole.

Paris Brown – lost her job before it had started, thanks to things said on Twitter years earlier.

I hear that there is now software available that analyses the language used on Facebook pages and comes to conclusions about likely personality traits of the page’s owner based upon the actual words they have used. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any, but I’m not going to let that get in the way of a good story! Assuming it’s true though, (or soon will be), how do people working in HR feel about using such tools for candidate selection? How do the people analysed feel? I don’t know. I do know that I wouldn’t like it happening to me. Are potential job seekers being more circumspect on Facebook since the highly publicised case of the Youth Commissioner losing her job before she’d even started because of some rash statements a lot earlier on her Facebook page? I do know that there are people earning a living by “cleaning up people’s online reputation”, but I suspect that the average computer user is still way behind in appreciating just how much information they are giving away and how this is being used.

George Orwell

Modern internet browsers come with a setting called “Do Not Track”. It is hoped that the writers of the software that tracks our movements around cyberspace will honour our expressed preference not to be tracked, but it’s too early to say how many will be honourable in this way. In the meantime, tracking software can follow us around cyberpace and build its own pictures of who we are, what we care about, what motivates us into action, and so on.

George Orwell predicted our being watched by technology, of course, in his novel 1984. The motivation he ascribed was political control. The way things are going, we will achieve the same results but the motivation will be money and we will have sleep-walked into it because we want a free internet. Once collected, the data can then be used by others who can claim legitimacy to see it. For example, the police can already access our recent travel history if we use an Oystercard.

The Hardy Tree

Thomas Hardy was mindful, while writing the Wessex Novels, that he was recording a way of life that was soon to be ended by the advent of the railways. The communities about which he wrote would soon no longer be self-contained: they would be joined to everyone and everywhere else by the railway. I dare say he had a lot of time to ponder the implications of the coming railway as he worked as a surveyor before becoming a full-time writer and was responsible for overseeing the proper re-location of bodies in St Pancras Churchyard to make way for the coming railway. On a side-note, many of the gravestones were temporarily re-located around a tree and have been left there for so long that the tree has grown into them. This is now known as the Hardy Tree. The church and churchyard are also noteworthy for other reasons.

Is the internet doing exactly the same thing as the railways but on a global scale and at a much deeper level? Will it change the way we see ourselves and behave as individual humans? I don’t know. Personally, I shudder at the thought of the loss of privacy and independence that all of this portends, but, on the other hand, I’m sure that we are all creatures of our own time and grow up embracing the realities of the world that we see at the time. Even if it does change us as humans, we’ll probably just accept change as it happens, and crusty old antedeluvians like me will continue to tut and say “where will it all end”. “you wouldn’t get me in one of those” and “it’ll end in tears”.

PS: for an irony of publishing in the digital age, see this link on how Amazon disappeared 1984 from countless Kindles

Snippets

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Jan 122013

Passwords (again), silly Twits, and more…

Test Your Passwords

Click here for a link to a Microsoft page that tests the strength of your passwords. Yes, I know I’ve given a link to a site like this before. I don’t apologise because I’ve seen how much upset can be caused by a malicious person guessing a client’s password. See this blog on the subject of stolen Gmail passwords, for instance. Even if you don’t change any existing passwords, please use strong ones in the future. In the meantime, find out how good that one password (that you use for everything!) actually is – or not.

A Plug for Low Cost Names

If you find yourself wanting to register a web domain, then I definitely recommend doing it with LCN. I’ve been using them for years and never had a problem, but hadn’t realised before just how good an example they set in communication and online support. This week I needed to register a domain for some testing I was doing. I needed to speak with someone and was very pleased to find that they prominently publish their telephone number on their website. Not only that, it is a normal, non-premium, UK landline number. Even better, the normally-elusive technical support people were available from option number one on their automated telephone menu system. Then they told me how many were in the queue before me. Then, within a minute or so, they answered me with a knowledgeable, UK-based adviser. That’s the way to do it!

Who Said You Could Share My Data?

Twitter and Linked In Logos merged together

Is it just a coincidence how snugly the Twitter and Linked In logos merge together?

I was rather miffed last week to receive an email from Twitter suggesting people that I might like to “follow”. Apart from the fact that I’m perfectly capable of deciding for myself whether my life is so empty that I want to fill it by “following” anybody (it isn’t and I don’t), I was annoyed by the unsolicited intrusion into my inbox and by the fact that two out of the three suggestions were people who had figured in my Linked In connections (one of whom I had deleted). I hadn’t realised before that Twitter and Linked In were connected and I certainly hadn’t knowingly given them permission to share information with each other. When I looked at the privacy policy of Twitter I learned:

“Links: Twitter may keep track of how you interact with links across our Services, including our email notifications, third-party services, and client applications, by redirecting clicks or through other means. We do this to help improve our Services……”

Well, I for one do not consider sharing data this way and then sending me unsolicited emails to be “improving…. services”. Instead, it just reminds me of some of my worst nightmares of these large organisations sharing more and more data amongst themselves, and then coming to computer-generated conclusions about who I am and what I want.

And still on the subject of Twitter…

Did you see the Channel 4 programme last week called “Don’t Blame Facebook”? It told tales of how injudicious tweeting and posting on social network sites can cause unforeseen problems. It’s amazing just how shortsighted and, frankly, stupid people can be in giving away too much information on these sites. Nevertheless, even I had to feel sorry for the the couple who were refused entry into the USA and sent back home without having their holiday just because of the paranoia of the spooks who monitor everything that is shared on Twitter. Apparently, the male half of the couple had tweeted that he intended to “..destroy the US” while on holiday. He just meant he was going to have some fun, and maybe a drink or two. Nevertheless, they were stopped by the US border guards on their way in, spent a while in jail, and then returned to the UK.

At the time of writing, you can still watch the programme “Don’t Blame Facebook” by clicking here.

Chrome now supports "Do Not Track"

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Dec 082012

The latest version of Chrome allows you to request that websites do not track which other sites you have visited

In my blog post of 12/08/12 – “What is “Do Not Track“”, I wrote that Chrome does not support “Do Not Track”. Well. they have now included it in the latest version of the browser. This is version 23.

To find out whether you have the latest version of Chrome:

Click on the “settings” button. It looks like this:

Chrome Settings Button
Click on the “About Google Chrome” option on the menu that pops up:

Chrome Settings Menu
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What is "Do Not Track"?

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Aug 252012

Are you happy for organisations to be logging which websites you visit?

You might assume that if you visit one website and then a completely different (and seemingly unrelated) one, there is no connection between the two and that neither of them would know about your visit to the other.

Homburg and binoculars After all, if you walked into one shop and then another, it would never cross your mind that your movements were being tracked. If you thought about it at length then it wouldn’t be difficult to work out that marketing people at John Lewis could tell if you’d bought something at Peter Jones in Sloane Square and then gone to Oxford Street and bought something at John Lewis. If you use the same credit card in both stores then they could work it out as they are the same company. If you didn’t want them to make the connection then you could have paid in cash.

Suppose, though, that you’ve merely walked in and out of HMV in Oxford Street (without even buying anything), and then yomped off to Muji in Whiteleys. You wouldn’t expect them to know in Muji that you’d just been in HMV (as far as I know they wouldn’t, so let’s not go overboard with the paranoia).

But that can happen in cyberspace. If a piece of software on one website has recorded your visit (on your own computer!), then a different website can access that information if the same software is installed on the second website as well as the first. The information is stored on your own computer in a small file called a “cookie”. I congratulate the inventor of that word for a magnificent piece of doublespeak. The word “cookie” conjures up ideas of pleasure, treats, sugar hits. The reality, though, is that a cookie is simply a text file containing information about a visit to a website.

Anyway, there is a growing unease about the way that far more information is being recorded about our web habits than we are aware of. This is why the EU introduced the badly-thought out “Cookie Law“.

Apart from the Cookie Law, a method is now being built into web browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc) whereby we can state our wishes as to whether websites track our activity in this way. The theory is that this preference is then sent by the browser back to the website that we are visiting and that the website then behaves accordingly. This expression of preference is being called “Do Not Track”.

There are, however, a few rather nasty big flies in the ointment:

There is no agreement as to what “tracking” means.
Most websites don’t take any notice of the stated preference.
There is no rule or law that forces the website to take any notice.

Hmm…

The possible definitions of “tracking” could, for instance, embrace these ideas:

Do not track what I do on a website that can provide information for targeting me with advertising (eg I’m male, interested in books, and live in London).
Do not track the different sites that I visit (as this could allow inferences to be made about my behaviour, preferences etc).
Do not even track my movements within one site (eg which pages did I visit, in what order, and how long did I spend on each page).

Bloodhound The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is currently thrashing out the details of a standard agreement as to what tracking actually means. When that has been finalised there is likely to be legislation requiring websites to conform to the tracking preferences of website visitors.

At the moment, though, even if you are using a browser that enables you to set a preference for DNT (“do not track”) then it’s probably not switched on. In the next version of Internet Explorer (version 10) it will be switched on by default. In the meantime, Microsoft have published a web page that tells you whether the browser that you are using (and its version) includes the feature to request “DNT”.

If you visit this Microsoft page on Do Not Track, it will tell you if the browser you are using supports DNT and whether it is on. If your browser is IE9, for example, it will show that DNT is “supported”. Assuming that you are using Internet Explorer 9 to access this web page, you can then follow the instructions further down the same page to “express your preference not to be tracked in IE9″. Nothing will seem to happen when you do this. However, if you then hit the F5 button (which causes the screen to be refreshed) then you will see that it is now saying that DNT is “detected” rather than supported. This means that “DNT” is now switched on.

In other browsers:

If you are running IE8 with Vista or Windows 7 then it’s a good idea to upgrade to IE9. That option is not available if you are running Windows XP. IE8 does not support DNT.
To turn on DNT in the latest version of Firefox, go to Options, Privacy pane, and tick the box as illustrated.
Chrome doesn’t currently offer DNT.
In Safari, open Preferences, then Privacy, then tick the box next to “Ask websites not to track me”.

The “Do Not Track” setting in Firefox

Despite all the shortcomings listed above, it wouldn’t do any harm to set your preference if you don’t want to be tracked.

The Cookie Law

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Jun 022012

The so-called “Cookie Law” came into effect on 26/05/2012.

EU stars inside a cookie So, what are cookies? They are small text files placed on your computer by the website you are viewing. They are used by the owners of that website for various purposes:

Analysing their web visitors and what they do on the site.
Managing on-line shops (eg, remembering what’s in a visitor’s “shopping basket”).
Personalising the way the visitor sees the website (remembering preferences).
Tracking the online behaviour of the visitor to target advertising.

And what is the new law about?

It says that a website must seek “informed consent” before placing cookies on a visitor’s computer. This implies that the site must explain what cookies it sets and what their uses are (to ensure that the consent is “informed”), and that the user must agree to the cookies being placed (the “consent” part).

How will websites comply?

Aah, now it gets difficult. It’s been estimated that only about 5% of sites that need to comply have done anything about it. This is probably because no-one wants to use the most obvious solution. This is the introduction of a popup window explaining about consent and requiring the user to click on a button, thereby granting consent to place cookies. It would seem that everyone is watching everyone else to see who comes up with a better way of dealing with this.

And why is it stupid?

It will alienate web visitors rather than help them. They have to click to confirm acceptance of cookies EVERY TIME they visit a site. This, of course, could be repeated dozens of times a day as the visitor goes to different sites.

It’s about as blunt a tool as you can imagine. You won’t get to choose which type of cookies you accept or what the website can do with your cookies or anything like that. It’s simply a question of the website saying (in effect) “if you want to use this website you’ll have to agree to accept ALL the cookies I place on your computer”.

No-one’s going to take the slightest bit of notice of the information that websites will have to provide to ensure that consent is “informed”. Do you EVER read the “terms and conditions” that you have to agree to before you can install/update software? Of course not. It won’t be any different with information about cookies.

There are better ways of dealing with the privacy issues connected with cookies. Settings in the browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox etc) are better placed to deal with cookies in a way that suits the individual user (eg, by deleting all cookies when the browser is closed, denying acceptance of “third party” cookies, etc).

A cartoon of an ass (donkey) Even the authorities appear to think it’s stupid

The government has said that their own websites do not conform.

The ICO (Information Commissioners Office) is responsible for enforcing the new law, but even they appear to be saying “don’t blame us, it’s not our fault” when they say “The Information Commissioner is responsible for enforcing the law, and can’t change the legislation which was passed by the EU, and later implemented by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).” (source).

There is evidence that the government is already trying to wriggle out of having to enforce this law by suggesting that all that websites need to do is rely on the idea of “implied consent” – ie, all the website owners have to do is – nothing. The ICO site says “Implied consent is a valid form of consent and can be used in the context of compliance with the revised rules on cookies.” The ICO guidance booklet states that “implied consent” can be inferred from the mere act of visiting a website and moving from page to page! Honestly. I kid you not. Page 7 says “For implied consent to work there has to be some action taken by the consenting individual from which their consent can be inferred. This might for example be visiting a website, moving from one page to another or clicking on a particular button. The key point, however, is that when taking this action the individual has to have a reasonable understanding that by doing so they are agreeing to cookies being set. “ Duh!

See this Guardian article for further information on implied consent.

Conclusion: Like almost everyone else, I am not rushing into ruining my website by forcing visitors to respond to popup messages. I am recommending to my own computer clients that they don’t spend time and money making their own websites compliant at the moment as the ICO have made it clear that they are not going to be fining anyone in the forseeable future.

If you get annoyed by such popups on other sites, please have some sympathy for the site owner: they’re just trying to conform to a stupid law introduced by the same government that brought us Pastygate!

And just in case you’re inclined to defend this law by saying it’s only the UK enactment of an EU Directive, then I suggest reading the Guardian article referred to above: it appears that the rest of Europe is not taking this Directive seriously.

Here’s an online petition calling for the scrapping of the cookie law.

Abusing Facebook Data

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Mar 102012

I realise that I do go on a bit about what I see as the dangers of Facebook, but, while acknowledging that fact, I don’t apologise for it. This week I spotted something that is not directly Facebook’s fault, but is a consequence of collecting all that personal data about people’s lives, thoughts, beliefs, actions, and which is surely a gross misuse of that data. Click here for the full article, but here’s a precis:

US colleges and even government departments are more-or-less forcing students and job applicants to open up the most private data in their Facebook accounts to prying, official, eyes. They do not need hacking techniques to get into the accounts on the quiet (although I’m sure such techniques exist and are available to any organisation that wants them enough). Instead, they just use bullying tactics – such as forcing a job applicant to open up their Facebook account in front of the interviewer, or making it a condition of application that a student “befriends” a snoop paid by the college to spy on students via their Facebook accounts.

If I ever try to have a conversation about online privacy to anyone under about 30 years old they just think I’m insane. They “don’t get it”. They can’t see why it’s potentially a bad thing to trust your most personal secrets to websites over which you have no control. Well, surely no-one can be oblivious to the threat to personal liberty that’s obvious in the tactics described here.

It’s easy to say “that’s in the USA, it wouldn’t happen here”, but why wouldn’t it? The way I see it is that the very fact that all this data exists constitutes a threat in itself. There are bound to be people out there keen to exploit the power that is latent in the data itself. I doubt very much that people on the receiving end of such bullying could plausibly deny that they have a Facebook account, so what are they to do?

One of the positions often taken by people who don’t care about personal privacy online is to shrug their shoulders and say “I’ve got nothing to hide. I don’t care what people see”. To my mind, that’s an attitude taken by people who haven’t thought it through. We all present different facets of ourselves to different people in different situations. Imagine a typical eighteen year old enjoying herself on an evening out with friends. She is doing nothing wrong, nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to “get found out about”. Nevertheless, would that eighteen year old feel comfortable if she thought that an authority figure such as a parent, teacher, employer, or policeman, could listen in to every word of every conversation, record it, replay it, analyse it? In effect, that’s the kind of thing that’s happening if people are being bullied or forced into opening their Facebook accounts to authority figures with no right to be there.

Most of my computer support clients are more likely to be the parents of such bullying victims rather than the victims themselves, but maybe that makes this topic more – rather than less – relevant to you. Here’s that link again.

And remember what they say – just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you!

Internet Privacy Developments

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Jan 142012

Last month I was appalled – but not particularly surprised – to learn that your credit rating in the future could be affected by who you hang around with on Facebook. A company called Lenddo claims on its website to be “… the world’s first credit scoring service that uses your online social network to assess credit.” (Click here if you find it hard to believe). Admittedly, they do say on their website that they’re aiming themselves at “professionals in emerging markets” rather than UK citizens, but that doesn’t affect the principle and it doesn’t stop this from being – potentially – the thin end of a very nasty wedge.

So, if you are “friends” (according to Facebook’s meaning of that word) with people who have a poor credit rating then your own credit rating could be affected. I know I’m in danger of showing my age here, but I was brought up to believe that finances are a personal and a private matter. It’s none of my business what someone else’s credit rating is – whether they are friends, family, colleagues or anyone else (unless, of course, I enter a financial relationship with them). Lenddo. however, are saying EXACTLY the opposite. They are saying that if I apply to them for a loan then YOUR credit rating becomes part of MY financial business if you and I are Facebook friends. If you are a computer client of mine then our financial relationship is based on trust and I wouldn’t have it any other way. But if I’m daft enough to take Lenddo and Facebook seriously I might now be interested in your financial status because it could reflect on my own – rather than on whether I think you will pay my bill for the computer service I provide!

It gets worse. Lenddo could be finding out all kinds of other information from a Facebook account – such as sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity – that a lending institution would not normally know. In fact, it would be probably be against industry codes of practice and even discrimination legislation for such factors to be included when considering providing credit. How can you be sure that any CRA (Credit Rating Agency) has only considered those factors that are legal and ethical if they’ve trawled through your Facebook account?

But it gets even worse than this. Lenddo explicitly states that it “MAINTAINS THE RIGHT TO NOTIFY YOUR FRIENDS, FAMILY AND COMMUNITY if the borrower fails to repay”. This is a quote from their website, including the capital letters – see this link. So, picture the situation. You’re having a hard time, going through a bad patch, lost your job, lacking confidence, scared about how you are going to repay your debts and then, wham, you find out that one of your creditors is telling all your Facebook friends that you’re welching on your financial obligations. That’s really going to help. Lends a new meaning to the idea of “social network”, doesn’t it?

When news of Lenddo hit the fan last month I decided not to blog about it because I know I already bang on a bit about the downside of social networks. I’ve only changed my mind this week because I’m pleased to be able to balance this development with some much better news about privacy and the internet:

A woman (identified only as AMP) has obtained an injunction to “prevent transmission, storage and indexing of any part or parts of certain photographic images which are claimed to belong to the Claimant”. AMP had lost a mobile phone containing photographs intended only for the sight of herself and her partner. These appeared on the internet, together with enough information to identify the subject of the photographs. In the past, courts have been very reluctant to intervene when content has reached the internet. It is very, very difficult to stop the spread of data once it has been published online. In most cases, it is thought, any injunction would be unenforceable and, therefore, would do no more than bring the law into disrepute (remember all the fuss about “super injunctions” being subverted by Twitterers/Tweeters/Twits last year?). In this case, however, the judge ruled that the spread of the photos had not become uncontrollable as anyone looking for the material would (a) have to know that the material exists and is, therefore, worth searching for and (b) would need to know the identity of the subject in order to do the searching and (c) could, in principle, be traced on account of the way the files are copied and spread. The injunction was, therefore, granted. Aah, that’s better. Click here for the full Judgement.

Firefox Bells and Whistles

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Oct 292011

One of the great strengths of the Firefox web browser is the ability to bolt on goodies – bells and whistles, if you like – that add useful features to the browser. These “bolt-ons” are usually free but the authors may invite you to make a small donation of a couple of pounds.

There are lots of these “add-ons”. They go under the name of “add-ons”, “plug-ins”, “extensions”. I can’t find any definition of these terms that differentiates between them so I’m not sure if there’s some subtle difference between them or not. Anyway, they’re all “bolt-on goodies” as far as I am concerned and Firefox is the best of all the major browsers in this respect.

The best place to go hunting for these add-ons is to open Firefox, click on the “Firefox” button (see figure 1), click on “Add-ons”, then click on “Get Add-ons” and then click on “browse all add-ons” (bottom righthand corner of screen). Figure 1 illustrates Firefox version 6.

Figure 1 - Firefox Add-On Button

To give you an idea of what’s available, here are half a dozen of the ones that I find the most useful:-

Adblock Plus 1.3.9

This removes most online advertising and blocks known malware domains. I appreciate that I’m open to charges of hypocricy and biting the hand that feeds me as I, myself, advertise my computer support and training services online using Google AdWords. Maybe I wouldn’t encourage blocking ads if it wasn’t for the fact that some of them are very distracting and irritating – especially the animated ones. AdBlock Plus is a godsend for grumpy old men like me.

BetterPrivacy 1.66

Normal methods of removing tracking cookies do not include the removal of “super cookies” created by Flash objects. This add-on gives the option of manually managing them or automatically deleting them, thereby reducing the chances of third parties discovering where you have been on the internet.

Flagfox 4.1.5

This add-on shows an icon of a flag in the website address bar. This flag is of the country in which the website server resides. I tend to glance at this to help me decide whether a website is genuine and/or trustworthy. This helps my decision-making if I’m considering an online purchase from an unknown company.

My Homepage 1.2

It was stumbling on this “extension” this morning that caused me to write this blog offering computer advice on this subject. I have always been irritated by opening a new browser tab and not having it open my Home Page. Why open a new tab with a blank page? What good is that to anyone? Anyway, this little extension solves it – magic!

Print Edit 5.4

I was thinking of writing a blog post on the problems of printing from web pages, although I have mentioned the subject before – eg Website Frustrations. This add-on greatly helps in overcoming those problems as you can choose which “elements” or “chunks” of a web page will be sent to your printer. Isn’t it amazing how irritated we all get when the printer spews out four pages and all we wanted was a couple of paragraphs?

TrackMeNot 0.6.728

OK, we’ve had the “grumpy old man” a couple of times already today, so here’s more of the paranoid: I really don’t want anyone taking any kind of note of what I do on my computer unless it is information that I have specifically and knowingly provided. What TrackMeNot does is to issue random search requests to the main search engines – AOL, Yahoo, Google, and Bing – so that genuine searches are “hidden” amongst all this chaff. This reduces the chances of the search companies being able to compile meaningful profiles based on user search patterns. On the authors’ website they say “Placing users in full control is an essential feature of TMN, whose purpose is to protect against the unilateral policies set by search companies in their handling of our personal information“.

They go on to say “We are disturbed by the idea that search inquiries are systematically monitored and stored by corporations like AOL, Yahoo!, Google, etc. and may even be available to third parties. Because the Web has grown into such a crucial repository of information and our search behaviors profoundly reflect who we are, what we care about, and how we live our lives, there is reason to feel they should be off-limits to arbitrary surveillance“. Quite.

Protecting Data when Disposing of a Computer

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Sep 242011

Hard disc with cover removed - don't ever remove the cover if you want the drive to work again!

Disposing of your old computer may not be as easy as might imagine.

You can not simply put it in a wheelie bin, destined for landfill. Computers contain several metals that will poison the ground. There are EU laws banning disposal in this way. Either take it to a local authority waste disposal site or contact your council to make a special collection.

Before disposing of it, though, it is prudent to ensure that no-one can get at the data on it. This applies whether the machine is going to cyber heaven or on to a new owner. Here’s a list of the broad options available to you:

If the computer is condemned

1) Remove the hard drive and keep it.

Pro

2) There is no possibility of its contents falling into the wrong hands.

Con

2) You do have to keep the drive somewhere (although, as my mother used to say, “it won’t eat any meat”)

2) Remove the hard drive and destroy it.

If you open up the case of a hard drive and deface the mirror-like surfaces with a screwdriver or sandpaper then you are almost certainly putting it beyond any readability or use. I agree that it may be technically possible for someone with all the right (very expensive and specialist) equipment to read fragements of the drive, but I would rather start worrying about the possibility of being hit by a meteor than worry about this happening.

Pro

2) You don’t have to keep the drive

Con

2) It can be a bit of a chore actually geting the drive out of the case (particularly on older laptops).

3) It can be difficult to open up the case of a hard drive in order to deface it

3) Delete everything off the hard drive

You could use a software utility such as CCleaner to completely wipe the drive (including the operating system and all programs and data – whether deleted or not)

Pro

2) You can’t forget to delete specific data files

Con

1) You need to install and run the software and it can then take quite a long time to “scrub” the drive in this way (particularly if you set the software to make multiple “passes” over the drive).

If the computer is going to a new home

Removing the drive is a bit drastic. It is likely that the new owner won’t have the expertise to source a new drive, install it, and re-install the operating system and software. In fact, even if s/he does have the knowledge and resources it is very likely that it just won’t be worth doing. So, the aim is to pass on the computer so that it can be used with the minimum of fuss but without compromising your data. The options are:

1) Delete sensitive information

This includes your data files, your browser history, saved passwords etc. You may also need to un-install software that is licensed to you that you intend to install on your new machine.

Pro

1) This is the least amount of work you need to do in order to protect your data.

Con

2) The deleted data may be recoverable. If you have the slightest doubt about the integrity of the new owner or the destiny of the drive then the data that you think you have deleted could be vulnerable. This is because “deleting” data in the normal way does no such thing. What actually happens is that the operating system maintains a directory of the files that occupy the different parts of the drive. When you delete a file it simply changes the directory such that the space occupied by the (deleted) file is now eligible for re-use (ie the space can be over-written with a new file). The file itself is still present on the disc until the space is re-used and it can be “un-deleted” using special software tools.

Scrubbing brush and hard disc

2) Delete sensitive information and then “scrub” the drive

This consists of deleting the data as above, but then running special software that over-writes the space that may still be occupied by readable data. The software that I recommend for this is Piriform’s CCleaner.

Even this process can sometimes be “reversed” by highly specialised people and facilities. Frankly, I’m back to worrying about the meteor before worrying about this possibility. And if you are as paranoid as this, then you may also wish to consider the possibility of data still being present on the drive due to the drive head having shifted fractionally over time such that data you wrote onto the disc a long long time ago is still readable at the very edge of the tracks of data.

Pro

1) Fairly easy to do and should satisfy the non-paranoid

Con

2) Won’t satisfy the paranoid. If you belong in this category,then I recommend that you read this article on data remanence

3) Delete everything off the hard drive

You could use a software utility such as CCleaner to completely wipe and scrub the drive (including the operating system and all programs and data).

Pro

1) You can be sure that you didn’t leave anything behind that you would rather have deleted.

Con

2) The new owner will need to re-install the operating system and software.

Conclusion: whether your old computer is at the end of its life or going to a new home you will almost certainly need to take steps to protect your confidential data prior to disposal.

Internet Privacy (2)

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Sep 032011

We may be fighting a losing battle with online privacy. As mentioned in last week’s blog on Internet Privacy, companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon hoover up every crumb of information they can glean about us and use it to target us with ads and content that they think will appeal to us. As far as I know there’s isn’t any perfect strategy for maintaining online privacy, but there are lots of small things we can do that will certainly help.

I’m not concerned here with security on the internet as it relates to the safety of children, or trying to hide our identity so that we may be completely untraceable. I’m just trying to keep down the amount of un-necessary information we give to the likes of Google. These tips are equally valid in a home computer or business computer environment.

So, here are some tips. They’re not listed in any particular order. Some are easier to put into practice than others:

Create another email account that you never intend to use for “real” email. Don’t include your own real name in the account name and don’t give real data when completing the compulsory items of information in the account profile. Quote this email address on any websites that demand you supply one and where you don’t expect a normal, ongoing, email exchange (since you don’t want to have to keep checking this account for incoming emails). Having an “anonymous” account like this also helps in keeping spam out of your main email account.
If a website demands that you give personal information that is not connected with a financial transaction nor has other legal implications, then LIE. I will NOT give my real address or date of birth online when there is no legitimate NEED for it (and there are few legitimate needs except the protection of the other party in financial transactions). If I am entering a compulsory date of birth on a website where this is “relevant” (but not essential for financial reasons) then I enter a date that is close to my own (so that it makes no difference for the legitimate purposes of the website) but from which I can not be traced.
When filling in online forms, exercise judgement in completing any item that is not marked as compulsory (usually indicated by an asterisk or written in red). If they don’t require you to give a date of birth then why would you? If an item is compulsory but impertinent then LIE.
Don’t click on any “like” buttons in Facebook or anything similar (eg in Google).
Don’t take part in online quizzes or polls.
Preferably, don’t use Facebook at all. If you are a Facebook user and have any concerns at all about the privacy of your data, read this article about Facebook’s attitude to privacy.

Magnifying glass over computer keyboard

If you’re still keen to use Facebook, go through all the settings and mark everything private except what you explicitly wish to share.
If you use LinkedIn, do not click on ads without first changing your privacy settings to exclude monitoring your activity re ads.
Do not use Gmail or any of its branded versions (I think Virgin’s webmail is one of those). Google reads your emails and bombards you with “appropriate” Google ads (sponsored links). See last week’s blog on Internet Privacy.
If you must use Gmail, at least ensure that you sign out when you are not actually using the email as Google records everything you do in your browser if you are logged in as a Gmail user. They then use this info to target you with Google ads. I also sign out of other sites, such as Microsoft Live, as soon as I’ve finished with them.
Disable or remove browser add-ons that place “toolbars” and/or “search boxes” at the top of your browser. These often have tracking software in them. Incidentally, your browser performance will also be improved by doing this and your browser screen will be less cluttered.
Be very careful about “linking” any social networking site to any other (by giving any of them permission to access others). You might add data to one program, believing it to be private, forgetting that you have linked it to another program that sucks in what you thought was private data and spits it out somewhere more public.
Set your browser so that all cookies are deleted as soon as you close the browser (but this has implications – read on).
Set your browser to delete your browsing history as soon as you close your browser.
Set your browser to disallow third party cookies.
Turn off Amazon browsing history.
If you use Firefox or Chrome as your browser then you can install AdBlock Plus. This will stop most ads from appearing while you are browsing.
If you use Firefox, another excellent add-on is Better Privacy. This deletes the “flash cookies” that are placed on your hard drive by Flash Player. Flash cookies (also known as LSOs – Locally Stored Objects) are not removed or blocked along with other cookies.
Do not be misled into thinking that “private browsing” will give you any protection. It does suppress evidence on your own computer but it does not prevent sites you visit from recording your activity. Nevertheless, it may help to turn it on.
More technical ways of throwing websites off your scent include using proxy servers and using a dynamic IP address.
If you want to make an online purchase from a website that you don’t completely trust, you can use a prepaid Mastercard. This will limit your financial exposure to the value on the card and will also keep all your personal information from the website.

As if all this wasn’t already a nightmare worthy of a Kafka novel, some of these measures nullify others. You can turn off Amazon’s “browsing history” and, similarly, stop ask.com from retaining your history but the instructions to turn these off are held in cookies so if you delete cookies (as recommended above) you’re back to square one with these two sites. Doh!

Some of the tips above are easy to carry out and others less so. I haven’t attempted to give specific instructions (eg for different versions of different browsers) as it would just take too long.

If you’d like some help in tightening up your online privacy, contact me to arrange either a computer support visit or some online remote support.

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