Whether you're browsing the Internet, sending or receiving text messages, or chatting on your cell phone, information you may think is private very often is not.
That's why it's important to educate yourself on counter-surveillance strategies to reclaim your electronic privacy. And now, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has created its Surveillance Self-Defense project—an online how-to guide for protecting your private data against government spying. You can read about the project at http://ssd.eff.org.
I view myself as fairly knowledgeable about electronic surveillance threats, but I learned a great deal I didn't know when I reviewed the guide. For instance, you probably have heard of "cookies"—those bits of code that record your use of a Web site and your user preferences. Modern Web browsers give you ability to discard cookies periodically or even every time you close the browser.
However, new "super-cookies" can't be deleted as easily. For instance, the Firefox Web browser has a feature called "DOM storage" that tracks your visits to Web sites using this technology. Surveillance Self-Defense tells you how to turn this feature off so that hackers, government investigators--or anyone else--can't track your movements on the Internet.
There's lots of other good stuff in Surveillance Self-Defense on subjects ranging from encryption to securing instant messages. I recommend that you read Surveillance Self-Defense and take its suggestions to heart. Doing so will give the government—and anyone else—a lot less information to search, seize, subpoena or spy upon.
Copyright © 2009 by Mark Nestmann
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