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Privacy policies are legal notices posted on a Web site detailing how the Web site will use personal information. Privacy policy requirements vary depending on the privacy laws governing the Web site. For example, privacy laws are different in Canada, the United States, and the European Union. Since you may visit Web sites from around the globe, you can’t be sure that your privacy is being protected according to your country’s laws.

While various laws or even an absence of laws dictate privacy policies, most contain similar information. Privacy policies generally tell you whether the Web site uses cookies or other data mining items, what personal information is collected, how they will use the information, who will receive the information, and how they will protect the information.

Most privacy policies are readily available through a link on the home page, often at the bottom of the page. For example, the Filetonic Web site provides a link to our privacy policy in the “footer” area located at the bottom of all pages. This privacy policy, like many privacy policies on the Internet, is based on US Safe Harbor principles.

US Safe Harbor for Privacy is a framework of data protection principles covering: notice, choice, onward transfer, security, data integrity, access, and enforcement. The safe harbor addresses the stricter privacy requirements of the EU and provides a means of providing privacy protection that meets these requirements. You can read more about Safe Harbor here.

It’s important to ready privacy policies so that you completely understand how your personal information is being used and protected. For example, if you purchase a product, you must reveal your credit card number as well as other personal information. Does the Web site have security measures in place to prevent someone accessing their servers and stealing their data?

Even if you aren’t going to purchase products from the Web site, you may be giving up personal information simply by landing on their home page. It’s not uncommon for IP addresses to be collected and recorded. While not necessarily personally identifiable, some users object to this.

If you can’t find a privacy policy posted on a web site, try Googling the Web site’s name followed by “privacy policy.” For example, typing in “Amazon privacy policy” immediately displays a link to Amazon’s privacy notice. Of course, had you scrolled to the bottom of the Amazon home page, you would have found a privacy notice link right next to the copyright notice.

Your assignment as you browse the Internet over the next few days is to start reading privacy policies. These are good measures of a Web site’s credibility. As you learn more about privacy issues, come back to Filetonic.com for advice covering protecting your privacy. 

EULA stands for End User License Agreement. This is an agreement between you, the end user, and the software provider. EULAs come in two forms: paper and electronic. For example, if you buy software at your local electronics store, the software will come in disk form and likely have a EULA printed on paper and may even have an electronic version as well. If you buy software online and download it, it will have an electronic EULA as part of the installation routine.

EULAs define and restrict what you can do with the software. For example, most EULAs strictly prohibit copying and distributing the program. While this serves the software provider’s best interest and is a reasonable agreement, other clauses in EULAs take away your rights to sue should the software be poorly coded and damage your computer. In addition, EULAs often spell out that they will impose upon your privacy in some manner. Would you voluntarily allow a program to monitor how you use your computer? Chances are you have readily agreed to just this, not once but time and time again.

Do you really read the EULA? Paper EULAs often have tiny print and are filled with legalese. Electronic EULAs are also filled with small print, complex language, restrictions, exclusions and other notices. Plus, they require that you click “I agree” before you are allowed to install the software. As a consumer, if you want to use the software, you have to agree to the terms of the EULA.

What’s so bad about agreeing to EULAs? If the EULA is straightforward and fair and doesn’t strip away your rights or impose upon your privacy, then go ahead and agree. The problem with EULAs arises when they contain unreasonable conditions, limit liability, or invade your privacy. For example, did you know that many EULAs actually prohibit criticism of the product? Other EULAs admit that they will be adding programs such as pop-up ad generators and then go on to prohibit removing these unwanted programs.  

So, what can you do? Not much. When possible, read the EULA before you buy. Some software developers post their EULAs on their websites including Adobe and Symantec. However, most EULAs aren’t generally available until after you’ve made the purchase and opened the box - which makes your product virtually unreturnable thanks to stores’ “no return on open software” policies.

If reading the EULA beforehand is not possible, take the time to read the EULA carefully after you buy the software. If you are not comfortable with the EULA’s terms, don’t install the software. Call the software vendor directly and complain, asking for a full refund. In addition, let the electronics retailer know of your dissatisfaction with the product’s licensing agreement. The more consumers speak up, the better the chances of drawing attention to these concerns.    

Finally, get involved. Several consumer organizations have formed to speak out against unfair EULAs. Here are a couple of good resources to learn more:

AFFECT - Americans for Fair Electronic Commerce Transactions

Stop Before You Click - A campaign to promote fair terms

 If you use a computer, your actions may not be completely private. For example, if you are using a company computer at your workplace, your employer may be monitoring some, if not all, of your actions. Similarly, your personal computer may have software installed on it that records your usage. This software may be “monitoring” software or it could be “spyware.” What’s the difference?

While both monitoring software and spyware are intrusive, they aren’t the same thing. First, monitoring software is often installed with your knowledge. Employers may have clear policies covering computer and e-mail usage with full disclosure that monitoring software is in place.

Why would your employer want to monitor computer usage? One of the main reasons has to do with productivity. Employees at workstations “look” like they’re working. However, are they really working or are they checking out the latest You Tube videos? Another reason involves liability. For example, if an employee is viewing porn and co-workers are uncomfortable when passing by and seeing the images, a “hostile work environment” has been created.

At home, monitoring software is often used to keep tabs on how the children are using their computers. This type of monitoring software is typically categorized as “parental controls.” Parents can allow and block certain classes of Web sites and games as well as monitor Instant Messages and e-mail. Additional features include setting computer time limits, program usage, and download restrictions.

In addition, legitimate monitoring software could be used for spying. For example, if you have a jealous or suspicious spouse, monitoring software may have been installed on your computer without your knowledge. This type of monitoring reports back to your partner which Web sites you have visited, e-mails sent and received, Instant Messaging and chat transcripts, pictures or videos you have viewed, and other information. These programs are designed to run in the background without your knowledge. You won’t find a desktop icon or the program in your Programs list.

Spyware is another type of program that monitors computer usage. Spyware is installed without your knowledge, often as a hitchhiker to a legitimate download. Once installed, these programs collect data and transmit it to a third party. Each spyware program has its own mission ranging from sending you targeted advertisements based on your Internet history to stealing your financial information by capturing your keystrokes.

There’s not a whole lot that you can do about your employer’s monitoring software other than play by the rules and perform your job as expected. Likewise, if you suspect your spouse has installed monitoring software, you have trust and privacy issues that you will need to work out as well as a potentially dangerous situation should your partner have violent tendencies.  Of all the different types of monitoring, spyware is the easiest to deal with. A good anti-spyware program such as ParetoLogic’s XoftSpySE or Anti-Virus Plus removes existing spyware infections and prevents future ones.

There are a few different issues to consider when discarding your old computer. If your computer is fairly new, then it can likely be donated to a service that will find a new user for it. There are numerous causes that you can benefit by fitting your unwanted hardware for reuse. There is a community technology group called Free Geek based in Portland, Oregon who pride themselves on “helping the needy get nerdy since the beginning of the 3^rd millennium”. On their website at http://www.freegeek.org/ you can find information about partner organizations in several states and countries around the world. You can probably think of other places to donate close to home, like schools, women’s centers and community centers.

Before you give your computer to be reused you will want to make sure that you have removed any sensitive personal information. Make copies of your files and folders to a removable device, like a CD or a USB stick so you can reload them on to your new system.

Deleting data from your computer isn’t always enough to ensure that it is gone and, especially in the case that your computer has been used for business or financial purposes, you have to clear the hard drive. When you delete a file and empty the contents of the Recycle Bin the data is still on your system. When you delete a file this way, the computer deletes the information related to the location of the file, not the file itself. By removing the location of the file from the computer’s memory the computer views the space as empty and will write over it with another file saved in the future. Even when files have been written over, sophisticated data recovery programs are still capable of retrieving the information. So, to really clean the hard drive of any information, you need to use a disk cleaning software program like WipeDrive, DataEraser or DiskEraser. For more information and details on how to prepare your computer for donation visit the EPA’s website page at http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/osw/conserve/plugin/pcthing.htm.

If your system is more than five or six years old, then it is more likely that you will have to recycle it. Many companies will offer to take your used computer off your hands and arrange for recycling, but you want to make sure that they will follow ethical and environmental laws. Asking questions is a good way to find out the company’s methods. Many computer manufacturers offer computer recycling as well, and might only ask that you take care of the packing and shipping to keep costs down. Since a lot of the materials that comprise computers are toxic, or have been in contact with toxic materials, they can’t go in with your regular recycling. Computers and other sophisticated technologies are made from heavy metals and produce toxic chemicals that create environmental hazards. Proper disposal of your used electronics will ensure that harmful chemicals and carcinogens don’t end up in landfills or leeching into groundwater.

In the past, developed countries like the United States and Canada have shipped large portions of their electronic waste to be recycled in countries like China, with large, cheap labor pools and low environmental controls. To recycle your computer responsibly you might have to pay a fee to make sure that the e-waste is properly disposed of. Consider it a cost of computing, definitely worth the extra pennies to make sure that your computer use doesn’t harm the environment.

 When you are using your web browser, either Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox, each time that you visit a webpage your computer creates a temporary file of the images and information located there. When you use your Back button to revisit pages that you have seen previously, your browser can check with the webpage to see if any changes have been made. If the page is different than the last time you opened it, the browser will contact the site again and refresh the page. If there haven’t been any changes, the browser will return you to the previously visited page that it has stored as a temporary file.

These temporary files are the computer’s cache, that is, the computer’s collection of similar file types that are stored in a location that is, at least superficially, hidden to the user. This means that your computer stores a collection of web pages that you have visited and keeps them somewhere on your computer that is not immediately obvious to you.

While cache files are ‘temporary’ they are actually stored on your computer until you manually remove them. While they make return trips to Web sites faster, some people consider this a security, or at least a privacy risk, since they can be viewed even when you are offline. This means that it is possible for someone else to look at your cache files and monitor your Internet use.

If a lot of temporary files reside on your computer, as there likely are if you frequently surf the net, a large cache folder will slow down your computer, as it has to search to find the requested page. Additionally, a large cache folder takes up valuable space on your hard drive that could be used for other programs and processes.

Sometimes a glut of cached temporary files can cause browser and computer errors. This happens most often when there have been changes to web pages and the temporary files are not updated and interfere with the browser refreshing the data. In this case, you will see a ‘page cannot be displayed error’. Clearing your temporary files can remove these problems and errors.

To clear cache files on Internet Explorer, open your Tools menu and then select Internet Options. In this menu, select the Temporary Internet Settings tab and select ‘delete cookies and files’. If you use a Mozilla browser, got to your Tools menu, then choose Options, then select Advanced Files and then Clear Cache. Easy.

Once done, this will protect your privacy and help to optimize your computer’s performance. Software programs are also available online that will manage your temporary files and maintain pre-set preferences that you can customize to suit your use.

URL, pronounced “earl,” is the abbreviation for Uniform Resource Locator, which refers to a website or document’s address on the web. Within the URL there is information about the protocol type, the resource name and the domain name where the particular data is located. Basically, URLs are website and resource online addresses.

When you visit a website a record of the URL is saved in the address bar. If you go to your address bar, you can delete the address of this web page that you are currently reading and enter a random letter of the alphabet. You will see a list of website addresses drop down, listed by URL, that begin with that letter. For reasons of privacy and security, you might not want other users of your computer to see the websites that you have visited. To prevent this from happening, you can delete the URL history from your system.

In a few simple steps you can remove your URL browsing history. Using a Windows operating system, go to your Start menu, then select My computer, then Control Panel, then Internet Options. Select the tab titled General, then Browsing History, and then Delete.

If you use a Mozilla Firefox browser it is even easier to clear your URL history, and it is easy to remove individual entries without deleting the entire contents. Open either the list that drops down from the address bar or the history sidebar list. Select and highlight the URL that you want to remove and press Shift and Delete at the same time. That’s it.

When URLs are recorded in your address bar, your computer makes a corresponding registry key in the registry. So, even if you remove the history from your address bar, the information is still stored on your computer and can still be accessed. To remove your URL history from the registry a manual edit is required. Adjusting your registry is a potentially dangerous task and mistakes could mean that you have to start from scratch and reinstall your operating system. Now that you’ve been warned, and since you have already created a back up of your registry settings in case of emergency, you can go ahead and edit the registry if you still want to.

Open your Start menu and then choose Run. In the Search bar, type regedit and press Enter. The Windows registry will open and you should look for the registry key that corresponds to your browser. If you use Internet Explorer the registry key will read:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER → Software → Microsoft → Internet Explorer.

Next, select TypedUrls and you will see a list of all your saved URLs. The entry at the top of the list, called Default should not be removed, but you can delete the rest of the history.