Browser tweaks
Anonymous proxy software is a great way to mask your IP address online, but there is still plenty of information about your web surfing habits stored on your computer — which could also be viewed over a network, say, at the office, by your IT department.
At least it’s somewhat easy to control your privacy settings directly in your web browser — unless your business forbids non-administrators from making changes to your browser settings, that is.
You can disable cookies — tiny text files stored on your computer with information about where you’ve been online, passwords and other info — and you should also delete your browser history to cover your tracks. All major web browsers — such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome or Safari — allow you to delete your surfing history: simply go to the Options or Settings in your favorite browser and you’ll see how to do this.
You might want to turn off auto-complete or someone on your computer could type in a few letters in a search engine or web address (URL) bar and any recent places you visited could fill in automatically. And don’t click to allow sites to “remember my password” or someone could gain access to your private or financial information.
The easiest thing to do, however, is to see if your web browser has settings for surfing incognito — most of the major browsers do today. By enabling these privacy settings, your browser won’t save any history (and download history), search queries, cookies or passwords.
Ona related note, Twitter recently announced a “Do Not Track” feature that prohibits the service from collecting info about its millions of users. Nice. And Microsoft, in June 2012, said its upcoming Internet Explorer 10 browser — expected to launch alongside Windows 8 later this year — will not collect data about the online activity of its users by default.