Manage your passwords responsibly. Do not use the same password among all websites you join. Make sure that the password you use for encrypted or secure sites are different from less secure sites you visit. Don't use the same password you use for your credit cards or bank accounts for your online accounts and vice versa. Your router is the most important device to secure because your router could give a hacker complete access to your home network. Don't forget other connected devices like baby monitors. Third party cookies on your site might come from plugins, such as Youtube, or more commonly from advertisements you place on your website. Third party cookies are among the biggest concerns behind the e-privacy law as these cookies are at times malicious, used not just to track a user but to steal information. To protect your privacy on the web, you need to learn about the cookie controls provided in your browser. You should also investigate some specialized tools that can control all cookie types. Unfortunately, however, even if you do make the effort to control cookies, there is little that you can currently do to protect against cookie-less.

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2. Cookie 5 7 9 – Protect Your Online Privacy Screens Online
3. Cookie 5 7 9 – Protect Your Online Privacy Screens 10

Last modified: February 17, 2019

Most internet users have heard of the concept of “cookies” that store information about websites they’ve visited. On the other hand, many people don’t realize the scope of information that these cookies capture and how they can be used to monitor your behavior. In recent years, the usage and complexity of browser cookies has increased significantly. This largely went unnoticed by most users. To be sure, minimize this invasive monitoring by reading on. In this post we’ll summarize how Cookies gather information about you. Learn how to manage web cookies to protect your online privacy.

What is the Purpose of Browser Cookies?

Cookies are a tool website owners use to track your behavior on their site. They store this information about you for future visits. Information contained in these cookies could e.g. include:

• your IP address,
• browser version information,
• user ID assigned by the site owner,
• the dates you visited the site,
• what pages you viewed or
• which actions you took on the site.

They combine this information into an unique profile assigned to you. Cookies usually don’t contain any personal information about you, e.g. your name or phone number. Instead, marketers use these hardware details and build a “profile” on you they can study and analyze.

One of the most common examples of cookie monitoring is “retargeting” advertising. In short, a business will continue advertising to you long after you’ve left their website. Ever notice how you’ve visited a site and then something from that website (or closely related to it) starts showing up in your Facebook ads? Facebook partners with a massive number of web service providers. They allow them to continue advertising to you on social media after you visit their website. This is just one example – most social media platforms and large websites employ this method of advertising.

How to Manage Web Cookies

This invasive tracking should be concerning to privacy-minded users. The most effective way to prevent cookie usage on your PC is to simply turn them off. But note that this may break some functionality of certain websites.

An acceptable compromise may be to enable cookie deletion upon closing the browsing session – most modern browsers have this ability. You can take this a step further and use the various private-browsing modes available on your browser.

Learn hear how to use:

• Incognito mode in Chrome
• Private mode in Firefox

In short, prevent cookies by using these modes. These modes delete the activities you perform during these session. They also delete any temporary files created during the session.

Each OS stores them in a different location. Research where the directory is located on your PC and review the files before deleting or keeping them.

How Do I Manage Cookies?

You can usually delete cookies from the Privacy or History area, available from the Settings or Options menu in the browser. In most browsers, the same menu can be reached through:

• Ctrl+Shift+Del keyboard shortcut for Windows or
• Command+Shift+Del if you’re on a Mac.

To emphasize, the steps involved in deleting cookies can differ depending on what web browser we’re talking about.

Implement a VPN System for an Added Layer of Protection

There are steps you can take on your local PC to minimize the impact of web cookies. In addition, use hide.me VPN to mask your computer’s details. In doing that, you will supply a false IP address to the marketers that use cookies. One of the most concerning data points contained in a web cookie is the IP address of the user it belongs to. An IP address contains sensitive geographic information. They use this to pinpoint your exact location. By using cookies web site owners can even pull up your personal information via your internet service provider.

Use hide.me VPN and your true IP address will stay masked from the website you’re communicating with. The website sees only the VPN server’s IP. That is because all traffic goes through hide.me VPN servers. That way your IP stays hidden. This creates an effective diversion that prevents your geographic location being revealed to the website owner. Paired with the practices mentioned in the second section of this post, a VPN will create an airtight seal against the invasive monitoring by cookie owners.

Summary

In conclusion, most users don’t realize the extent to which they are being tracked and monitored by web cookies. Addressing cookies is an effective way to limit the information you provide. But, there are many other methods to be vary of. These are outside the scope of this post. At last, utilize the recommendations in this post. Prevent cookies on your PC. In addition, use hide.me VPN to enjoy the peace of mind of your activity remaining private.

If you have any other concerns that need addressing, contact our Support team directly.

May 2011

Cookies

When you visit a website, not only are you offered information or services, but your computer may also be offered a “cookie.” A cookie is a small file that is passed from a website to an end user’s (your) computer, often without your knowledge or consent. The cookie is used to save information about the interaction between you and the site, such as login credentials, preferences, and any work in progress. The cookie file is automatically stored by your browser (e.g., Internet Explorer or Firefox) on the local hard drive, and it can later be retrieved by the website.

Cookies were invented in 1994 so that information could be saved between visits to a website. This lets you avoid logging in for every visit, and cookies are also used to keep track of preferences and works in progress (such as items in an online shopping cart). Today, just about all of the top websites use cookies for one purpose or another. Cookies are a very useful feature of the web and, without them, web sessions would have no history; you would have to enter your information over and over.

Third-Party Cookies

Initially, cookies were only shared between the website (the “first party” in the transaction) and the user (the “second party”). Soon after cookies were invented, however, their use was expanded to third parties—organizations not directly involved in the interaction—such as advertising companies displaying ads on certain websites.

When an advertisement is on a web page supplied by a first party, the advertising content and a cookie are passed from the advertising company (the third party) to the end user’s (your) computer. Later, when you revisit that same first-party website, or another site that uses the same advertising company, the third-party cookie can be retrieved by the advertising company. If the cookie contains a unique identifier, then information about your visits to different websites can be linked together.

Further, if any of the sites (such as social networking sites) collect personal information, this information might also be collected by the advertisers. In this way, advertising companies are able to track the websites that you visit and build up detailed personal profiles, which may then be used to target further advertising to you.

Third-party cookies raise privacy concerns because the transactions typically involve unknown third parties and are conducted without your knowledge or consent. Unless you pay attention to an often-confusing set of options in your browser software, the cookies are created and used invisibly, and the information that is gathered may be stored forever. In addition, the tracking and profiling done by advertising companies can be extensive; it is common for your computer to collect dozens of third-party tracking cookies.

Flash Cookies

Flash cookies (also called Local Shared Objects or LSOs) are created by Adobe’s popular Flash browser add-on for multimedia. Like traditional cookies, Flash cookies can be used to save state information, as well as preferences, between sessions. They are also used to track the websites that you visit. These cookies are normally not visible to you, the end user, and options to control or delete them are usually absent or very difficult to find. Flash cookies are frequently found on websites, and they are often used along with traditional web cookies. In fact, even if you delete web cookies, Flash cookies can be used to recreate them.

Flash cookies raise additional privacy concerns because they are more hidden than traditional web cookies, so you have to take extraordinary measures to remove them. Also, many privacy policies that describe the use of web cookies fail to mention Flash cookies, and procedures to opt out of web cookies often have no effect on Flash cookies.

Super Cookies

A third type of cookie, called “super cookies,” is also emerging. Super cookies use new storage locations built into browsers to save information about you. For example, the Internet Explorer browser has “userData” storage, while Firefox has “DOM” storage”. The emerging HTML 5 specifications also set aside web storage that can last either for a browser session or permanently (until deleted). These storage mechanisms are larger and more flexible than traditional cookies so more information can be stored. Like web cookies and Flash cookies, you, as a user, are often unaware that super cookies exist. You, as the user, are often not provided with tools to control the information that is stored.

Cookie-Less Tracking

A person’s browsing habits can also be tracked without cookies. One such method involves “web bugs”, which are small, invisible image files placed on a web page or hidden in an e-mail message. When you view the page or message, the image is downloaded from a server that can keep detailed logs. These logs record such information as your location, Internet address, the page or message you are reading, and the current date and time.

When people view web pages, their browsers can reveal a lot of information. The browsers can be queried to determine their detailed characteristics, including version number, window size, settings, add-ons, and customizations. The combination of information, often called “device fingerprinting,” can be quite specific to an individual machine. An experiment conducted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation suggests that this information may be unique to about one in one million people.

Web Privacy Tools

Unfortunately, protecting privacy while browsing the web is not an easy task. Web browsers provide some tools for storing and clearing cookies. However, the default is to store all cookies indefinitely and the privacy tools are often hard to find and use. Browsers can be set to block cookies, but many websites require that you, as a user, allow cookies to use the service. Even blocking third-party cookies can impair the experience of some services, so users are faced with the onerous task of allowing some cookies and not others. If you do configure your browser to delete stored cookies, this often only clears traditional cookies, without removing super cookies and Flash cookies.

Some browsers have recently implemented a “private browsing mode,” designed to protect privacy. In Firefox, for example, web cookies are deleted when a private browsing session is ended. Unfortunately, super cookies and Flash cookies are not always affected by these settings, so they are still stored during private browsing sessions. In order to clear all the different forms of cookies and web storage, you generally have to install and use special add-on applications. Some popular tools for Firefox, for example, are the BetterPrivacy, NoScript, and Targeted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out (TACO) plug-ins.

Conclusion

Cookie 5 7 9 – Protect Your Online Privacy Screens Room Dividers

Cookies are powerful tools that give the web a memory, making for a better user experience. They do, however, also pose privacy concerns because they are often used without your knowledge or consent, and can be used to track your web habits and build detailed personal profiles about you.

To protect your privacy on the web, you need to learn about the cookie controls provided in your browser. You should also investigate some specialized tools that can control all cookie types. Unfortunately, however, even if you do make the effort to control cookies, there is little that you can currently do to protect against cookie-less tracking methods.

Cookie 5 7 9 – Protect Your Online Privacy Screens Online

The OPC is studying this issue. We raised concerns about tracking practices in our Report on the 2010 Consultations on Online Tracking, Targeting, and Profiling, and Cloud Computing. We will continue to address our concerns with industry, as appropriate.

Additional Reading

Eckersley, P. (2010) Browser versions carry 10.5 bits of identifying information on average.

Cookie 5 7 9 – Protect Your Online Privacy Screens 10

Krishnamurthy, B. and Wills, C.E (2010). On the leakage of personally identifiable information via online social networks. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, 40(1), 112—117.

McKinley, K. (2008). Cleaning up after cookies.

Schoen, S. (2009). New cookie technologies: Harder to see and remove, widely used to track you.

Soltani, A., Canty, S., Mayo, Q., Thomas, L. and Hoofnagle, C. (2009). Flash cookies and privacy.

Wall Street Journal. (2010). What they know.