Archive for Privacy

8 results.
Mar31

Opt out of personalized advertising

by Shahid Sharif on March 31, 2013 at 12:33 pm
Posted In: Privacy, SEO, Technology

All the services on the internet which provide you email, social networking and various other “FREE” services are after your data, after all you are a product to them.  Well there is a way to opt out of personalized advertising.

Opt out of Google personalized advertising:

  1. Sign into Google via Gmail, Google Plus, or any other Google service.
  2. Go to Ads Preferences Manager: https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/ads/preferences/#general
  3. On the left you will see two options: Ads on Search, Ads on Web
  4. Under Ads on Search, click on the Opt Out link, which will display Opt Out button to the right
  5. Click the Opt Out button.
  6. You can always Opt In by repeating steps 1 & 2 above if you decide to do so at a later date.
  7. You can repeat the steps 1 through 5 for Ads on Web as well.

Opt out of Microsoft personalized advertising:

  1. Go to Microsoft’s Privacy in Advertising page: https://choice.microsoft.com/en-us

    Microsoft Privacy in Advertising

    Microsoft Privacy in Advertising

  2. The main opt out options are shown in blue tiles above, and they are described in 3 & 4 below.
  3. Microsoft opt-out(Opt out of receiving personalized ads from Microsoft Advertising platform).
  4. Industry opt-out(Opt-out from participating companies that provide personalized advertising).
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Apr25

Google Drive

by Shahid Sharif on April 25, 2012 at 9:04 pm
Posted In: Monetization, Privacy, Security, Technology

Internet is a buzz with news on Google Drive and its privacy implications. Since the advent of free email offered by Hotmail in mid 90′s people have sacrificed their privacy over “free”. Everyone knows there is no easy money and everything “free” has strings attached.

Every “free” service exploits its users one way or another, why start complaining about Google and its policies on how they go about using your data. If your data is so important why the hell are you putting it on the net, pick a storage medium you can control and save all your data there.

The choice is yours “free” or not!

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Jan01

Security & Privacy Best Practices for users

by Shahid Sharif on January 1, 2012 at 4:45 pm
Posted In: Privacy, Security

I have put together some guidelines to ensure safe online experience, please ensure the following:

  1. Change all your passwords and ensure they are not same across all the accounts.
  2. For internet banking and all financial transactions, try to use a different browser, better still a computer or a virtual machine dedicated for such tasks.
  3. Never have your browser remember your userid’s and passwords, although it is convenient, it is a risk.
  4. Periodically (I usually clear these every time I close my browser) clear your browser cache, visited sites history, and cookies.
  5. Do not provide your accounts and passwords to requests via email, if in doubt give them a call.
  6. If you are not sure about authenticity of an email, do not open it, if it is important they will call you.
  7. Check your list installed FB apps, any apps you are not using, remove them.
  8. Check your list installed FB apps, ensure you are using the latest apps, as old apps had security issues.
  9. Check your FB privacy settings and update accordingly.
  10. Use opendns.org for your DNS as it also provides content protection from malware sites.
  11. If you do not have AV installed, checkout the free AV, Avast.
  12. Everytime you hear about a security breach on a website you have an account on, change the password immediately or even delete it if required.

This list will be updated regularly to bookmark it!

If you need help with any of these tasks contact us.

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Dec19

Protect your privacy while using social websites

by Shahid Sharif on December 19, 2011 at 6:23 pm
Posted In: Privacy, Security, Social Media

All of us check our social media accounts periodically during the day. To save us time logging on again we often leave our accounts logged in. Then we go ahead and start surfing other websites, what you do not realize is that most of the social media sites are tracking your internet surfing activities. If the website you are visiting has social media buttons on it, you are for sure providing your site activity details to that particular social media site. Once such news as mentioned in this article http://www.theblaze.com/stories/facebook-caught-inadvertently-tracking-you-once-you-log-off/.

To avoid social media sites tracking your activity you can do two things:

  1. Log off everytime you are done.
  2. Use a different browser for other non-social media activities.

Remember that you are a “product” to all the social media sites and you should try to understand you privacy and take control over it.

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Sep27

Untitled

by Shahid Sharif on September 27, 2011 at 10:35 pm
Posted In: Privacy, Security

Is it possible to delete all your data from the internet?

Jul10

Enact Fifth Amendent to get laptop password

by Shahid Sharif on July 10, 2011 at 1:51 pm
Posted In: Privacy

What goverment agencies do to get to your data, read more at EFF

Jun04

Wireless Keyboard & Mouse and OTA keystroke spies

by Shahid Sharif on June 4, 2011 at 9:48 pm
Posted In: Privacy, Security

Microsoft has released a new wireless keyboard and mouse duo which establishes a AES-128 encryption to protect snooping.

Apr17

Privacy….RIM and now Nokia

by Shahid Sharif on April 17, 2011 at 8:50 pm
Posted In: Privacy, Security

This seems to be becoming a common theme. A few months ago certain governments were after RIM to allow them ability to read device owners messages, and now they are after Nokia. Read more ….http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/16/india-wants-to-spy-on-nokia-users-blackberry-fans-no-longer-fee/

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