Privacy Plus

Entrepreneur, July, 2000 by Robert Mcgarvey

www.helie.com/BrowserCheck

Beware: Your Web browser could be a leaky bucket that, unbeknownst to you, reveals your e-mail address to every Web site that you choose to visit. What might seem like a nightmarish compromise of your privacy is apparently pretty common, and this site offers an instant verdict about just how well your browser's privacy fares. There's also a link on the page to another site that puts your Internet Explorer through additional security tests that some versions (mainly Windows NT varieties) seem to fail with alarming regularity. For a third verdict, head to something called "Privacy Analysis of Your Internet Connection" (http://privacy.net/anonymizer). In less than a minute, this site will tell you all it is able to find out about you, just by getting inside your browser. The results can be rather frightening. Log on to these sites, and the few seconds it takes to put your browser through the tests could well provide the prodding you need to download a more recent browser version (with stronger security safeguard s) of either Internet Explorer (www.microsoft.com/downloads) or Netscape Communicator (http://www.netscape.com/computing/download).

For more tips on preserving your online privacy and security, read the Electronic Freedom Foundation's "Top 12 Ways To Protect Your Online Privacy" (www.eff.org/pub/Privacy/eff_privacy_top_12.html), which provides a short but thorough primer with some great tips on guarding your personal details from prying eyes.

Robert McGarvey has covered the Web since 1995.