New threats

Once you know how to keep up with the common dangers like spyware and fake web, your data is likely to leak through legitimate companies.

GPS navigation, mobile calling, web search, everything is convenient tools. You use them to find your way, chat with friends, find websites and never pay attention to that data transaction. According to security experts, things like that also raise a new problem: they leave a "digital trace" in detail about where you go, who you talk to, even what you think. These traces can last for decades and there are no laws that protect such data. When your digital trace still exists, the data may be sold out, or may be "visited" by hackers, competitors .

All of these personal traces of us are growing and some recent cases show that they can be easily "scrutinized".

Pass the limit

GPS devices can be good assistants to help you find your way, save time and more. Having a recent incident brought to court shows that your personal details about your location and driving may be collected and used against you.

In the state of Connecticut, USA, American Car Rental car rental companies have installed GPS devices in their cars to track the rate and location of tenants. These devices report wirelessly to the headquarters every time the customer drives faster than 127km / h continuously for 2 minutes or more to impose a fine. The American Car Rental was sued and the court ruled that the company could not get extra money for speeding, but the court did not prohibit the company from using GPS devices to track customers' speed and location.

Trouble with the law

Since there are no laws yet on this issue, specify what businesses (or government agencies) can do with your data. According to an expert, a company may suffer from seven or eight types of binding user privacy laws. For years, lawmakers have tried to come up with a common unified standard but still have no results.

Consider personal privacy just like watching TV. Cable companies must comply with applicable laws, clear rules: they can and should not do anything about viewers' TV viewing habits. For example, they are forbidden to share viewers' information with third parties. But digital video recorders like TiVo are outside the "coverage" area of ​​the law.

In fact, TiVo also has a strict privacy policy, however, this policy comes from business motivation so it can be changed at any time.

According to a security expert, the current difficulty for users is that products or services may have different privacy policies and not everyone knows how to make such policies. .

Find and catch

Users interested in personal security should also know thoroughly what a company actually does with their information. For example, the company may know your internet search habits.

Once you get the search results, you often forget about the search and continue the work. But search companies do not forget. They save search data, often with an identifier indicating who performed the search; This level of data security varies depending on the search service.

According to an expert, what is important is how long the personal data is retained by the companies, what is the purpose of use and what will the companies do if the police "knock on the door" of their office?

There has been a case: the US Justice Department recently found a huge amount of information from Google's search index and asked Google to provide search queries that Google users typed in. Google has protested and succeeded. The government ruling court may have a list of some web addresses in Google's index, but it does not know the word the user typed in to search. The government will also not get information about who typed that search information.

Google does not "expose" its data storage policies and it does not answer questions about those policies. But according to an expert, data over 180 days may be more likely to be "exposed" to new information.

Like Google, Yahoo's search uses cookies with unique code; Each search is associated with that identifier. This code does not link to personal data, such as your age or location, but if you search while you are logged in to Yahoo, the search will be associated with your Yahoo profile.

Yahoo stores these search details "as long as it is needed," said a Yahoo spokesperson. However, according to a Yahoo spokesperson, the company keeps personal information just for itself: even when Yahoo works with partners on special advertising and promotion campaigns for users, it doesn't. ever give user data to partners.

Disclosure of the phone

Even if a company is not willing to share your personal information with a third party, you are still not safe. Your phone bill details are easily accessible to outsiders. They can do something as simple as calling a phone service company, pretending to be a customer, and they will get a copy of your phone bill, with the full list of incoming calls and call. There are some websites that sell such lists. The good news is that such sites are gradually "closed", but anyway your data is still there and experts are skeptical that they will be transferred to the "underworld".

FOUR WAYS TO RECEIVE PERSONAL DATA

Retrieve personal information by taking control of information that businesses or other organizations can access.

• Withdraw from the list: companies can share your data unless you ban them. Center for Democracy and Technology in the US offers a great free service at opt-out.cdt.org, linking to the types of forms withdrawn from the registration list for many types of services. Also, when you sign up for any new services, be careful with special offers and make sure you don't automatically log in to that service.
• Protect the call list: contact your service provider and set a password for your account. You can also ask the provider to remove the call details from the bill to prevent anyone from looking at it (of course, you can't know this information either). To check whether your request is accepted, ask your provider if anyone has access to your online account with your name.
• Read policies: read End-User License Agreements (EULAs) policies are often considered time-consuming. We know it is useful, but we often don't take it seriously. The free EULAlyzer tool from Javacool Software helps you by checking your policy or EULA to help you find keywords like "third party". Then, this tool evaluates what it finds and reports back to you what points to pay attention to.
• Anonymous web surfing and searching: there is a tool that will help you remove your identifier from Google cookies.This tool will delete all your Google settings, as each page displays how many search results.There are also many utilities to help you hide identifiers when browsing the web.

PC World USA 06/2006