February 17, 2012
Regaining control of my privacy
Last week I cancelled my Google account. For me, that was only the first step in regaining control of my privacy.
Don’t believe that it’s necessary to actively take steps to retain your privacy? Oh honey . . . it’s true. I’ve noticed sites are now mining cookies and search history so they can target me. They’re culling not only what I look at but my email addy as well (used as my login for various sites including my rss feed). Lately I’m getting a lot of spam (unsolicited emails) on things I’ve just done a search on. Early this week I looked at pans with ceramic coating. Shortly thereafter I noticed I had a dozen emails in my spam folder on this type of pan all coming into my login email. Coincidence? I sincerely doubt it.
I don’t know about you, but this kind of thing really pisses me off. If you’ve been following the news you’ve been hearing about Google and how it mines your data from not only your computer, but from your Android phone. Pair that with new hacking software written to grab account information off any device using Google Android or Google Chrome and you’ll begin to understand the scope of the problem. If this doesn’t concern you . . .And this isn’t limited to just Google. It’s only the most prominent of the offenders.
So this morning I did a search for a privacy plugin and installed Ghostery for Firefox.
Then this morning I had this in my rss feed. Target figured out a teen girl was pregnant before her father did.
Are you concerned yet?