 What can others learn about you? ©2003 by Walt Howe
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The information in printed white pages telephone books is in the public domain, and services like Switchboard have compiled the information into their databases. They will generally remove them, if you ask to be removed. There are a number of similar services. See our People and Business Finder Page for more.
That was the easy part. Is there other information about you on the web? Try searching for your name in Google. Put double-quote marks around your first and last names (for example, "Walt Howe")
Did you find anything interesting?
That is a quick look at the public sources with information about you. Whether you found anything or not, there still may be a lot more information about you that isn't as readily available. There are commercial databases available through the nets that are available for a fee to "qualified" businesses or individuals. Your social security number and credit rating are just two of the items that can be found on commercial databases.
The security breach at Microsoft's hotmail that we mentioned in our introduction was a worst case situation. For a few hours, anyone who learned the URL trick or accessed the hacker web site that automated it could access any hotmail account and see the contents. The security hole was plugged, but there may be others out there, and e-mail isn't very secure anyway.
Whenever you send e-mail, it is relayed through successive sites, and is theoretically accessible to a couple of dozen or so postmasters and system administrators, who have access to everything that passes through their machines. As a practical matter, so many thousands of messages pass through their machines that the chances of anyone looking at any particular message is pretty small.
If you are using an e-mail account on your employer's system, the courts have said that employers have a right to monitor e-mail on their systems. You probably run a somewhat higher risk of e-mail being read than you would with a large commercial provider.
On the other hand, suppose you have attracted the attention of an employer or law enforcement authorities for some reason. It is relatively easy to set up "sniffer" software to monitor every word of every message looking for your name or for certain keywords or combinations of words and to forward all such messages for special attention. If the organization's security isn't good and tight (many places aren't), it is also possible for hackers outside the system to set up "sniffer" software in an e-mail system, too.
What this all adds up to is that unless you have reason to be a particular target, you chances of having mail intercepted and read is very small, but still exists. As a rule, don't say anything in e-mail that you wouldn't want to see stuck up on a public bulletin board. If you can't accept that, consider encryption. It takes some extra effort to set up, but good, secure encryption is available in the United States and Canada. There is a Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) Plug-in for Eudora or Outlook E-mail software for Windows that is probably the easiest secure answer to encrypting e-mail.
Are credit cards safe to use on the net?
From the preceding discussion of e-mail vulnerability, you might not want to send credit cards numbers through e-mail. What about using credit cards with web sites? There was a news story last year about a hacker who retrieved a credit card number list from a web site's computer and sent the card numbers to the owners of the cards to show them how insecure the net is.
But you take similar risks every time you give your credit card to a stranger in a store or restaurant or over the phone? You take a risk every time you throw your credit card slips out in the trash? You risk giving away your credit card number every time you use it. The risks of using credit cards on the nets are probably less than every day usage, and the banks generally cover any losses anyway.
The public has been slow to trust credit card use online, and that is one major thing that is holding up large scale electronic commerce.
Many sites provide servers that operate in a secure mode with your browser to let you send information in safe encrypted form through the web now. The major credit card companies have recently agreed on standards for secure transmission of credit cards. Security is going to get a lot better in the times to come.
Will increased security enable the long predicted boom in electronic commerce? Not by itself. One more thing is needed, and that is a micropayment system. Many things are being offered free on the nets today with the expectation that eventually very small amounts can be charged for them--that people will pay a few cents or even fractions of cents to access information online that is free now, but costs more than a few cents offline. If micropayments were tried with today's systems, it would probably cost much more to process them than the payments themselves. These problems can be solved with good system design, the experts say, When micropayments systems succeed, perhaps then, the economic predictions can be realized.
What information do you give away with Usenet newsgroups and e-mail discussion lists?
Everything you post to Usenet newsgroups is easily read throughout the world. Furthermore, your posts are archived by search engines like DejaNews (now part of Google) and can be searched for anytime. The newsgroups you elect to post to are an expression of your interest areas. Your posts normally include your e-mail address, and this makes you a prime target for being picked up by spam e-mailers. One of the things you can do to offset this is to edit your e-mail address (if your newsreader allows it) so the robots that cruise newsgroups for e-mail addresses will not record it correctly. Another surer way is to use an anonymous remailer to send your messages. Be aware, though, that many people tend to discredit anything that is sent anonymously.
Note that everything we have said about newsgroups and privacy applies to e-mail discussion lists, too. The distribution is more restricted, but not usually more secure. Mailing list software often allows a subscriber to retrieve a complete mailing list of members. The mass marketers (spammers) see that a whole mailing list of people interested in a particular topic is particularly valuable, and you can be sure that such lists are regularly targeted. There are two things you can do to prevent your name being retrieved in this manner. One is to ask the list administrator to disable the membership list retrieval function. Many are doing that now. The other is to research the list commands to learn how to keep your name private when the list is retrieved by someone. Generally if you send the command HELP LISTNAME to the administrative address (not the address you send messages to) for the list, you can get a list of commands you can use. See our list subscription FAQ for more help with this.
Is there spyware or adware planted on your computer?.
Spyware is software planted on your computer to harvest and forward information about you to others outside your system. The information collected can range from a survey of your surfing habits passed along to advertisers and marketers to the passwords and credit card numbers you type passed along to crackers who will exploit it. The software can be planted through Trojan horses received in e-mail or even included in software you obtain and install for other purposes, such as Gator, Gozilla, products from Brilliant Digital, and freeware versions of CuteFTP. Many free game demos now include spyware embedded in them.
Spyware used to support advertising is often called adware. Another common name for these hidden programs with a hidden purpose is scumware.
To defend yourself against spyware, adware, and scumware, always maintain current anti-virus software on your system, and be very careful about installing software from unknown sources. Check out independent reviews before installing. Note that anti-virus software will not necessarily detect spyware.
Another disturbing trend in scumware is planting software that not only serves you ads, but uses your computers own unused processing power -- and that of many other unsuspecting people -- to support its own intensive processing tasks. This kind of capability has been used openly on a voluntary basis for such things as the worthwhile SETI project, but harnessing your computer deceptively for commercial purposes is about as low as you can get.
Spyware planted by advertisers is quite common. If you seem to be seeing an unusal amout of pop-up ads unrelated to the sites you visit, your system may be inviting them through spyware. Consider getting the free Ad-Aware software to check your system. I thought I protected my system well, but when I ran this software the first time, I found a dozen plants on my system from such sources as Adware, Doubleclick, and Flyswat.
Another program designed to detect and remove spyware, trojans, and hacker tools from your system is Pest Patrol. It is available for a free download and a 30-day free trial.
Webroot Spysweeper is another good program that I am currently using.
HijackThis is another powerful program for removing scumware, but use it with extreme caution. It can indiscriminately remove good software, too.
See my companion Security Guide for information on how to protect yourself better.
If you want to explore this subject further, there is lots of material on the nets. Here are a few starting points:
Do you have any questions, comments, corrections or suggestions for improvement? Post a message in the Navigating the Net Message Base or use the form below, and we will give your ideas prompt consideration.