There is a series of committee hearings about the state of online consumer privacy; the first one was conducted last March 16, 2011. This was held by the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. The main topic of the hearing focused on online commercial practices. These are practices that involve collecting, maintaining, using and disseminating large amounts of consumer information. These may also involve those that are very sensitive and private in nature.

There were several persons who gave their testimonies; the first one was FTC Chairman Liebowitz. At first he described recent efforts by the FTC to protect consumer privacy. This is done through law enforcement, education, and policy initiatives. After which he mentioned some highlights from the Staff Report on consumer privacy. Finally he discussed issues related to the “Do Not Track” proposal. He enumerated five important principles that any “Do Not Track” proposal should include.

First is the universal implementation of a Do Not Track system. This would save the consumers from repeatedly opting out of tracking on different sites. Second, the choice mechanism should be user-friendly. This means that any user should easily find or have access to it and should be easy to use. Third, the system should be persistent and should not be easily deleted by ordinary technical means. It should resist deletion when a user clears his or her cookies or updates the browser. Fourth, it should be capable of allowing users to opt out of advertising and tracking at the same time. Fifth, it should be “perfect”, meaning with no loopholes, be enforceable and effective.

We all get it.  We all hate it.  What is it?  Spam, of course.  The question is how did we get it.  And the answer is that we usually did something stupid.

Wait, did I just call you stupid?  Unfortunately, yes.  And for the record, I do stupid things too.  For example, I’ve entered my e-mail address into sites to sign up for a white paper or free download.  Now they have my e-mail.  In some cases, this is not a big deal.  In other cases it is absolutely a nightmare.  I’ve been inundated with all sorts of offers ranging from ways to grow my private parts to offers of sharing in millions of dollars.  It gets downright annoying.  But you know what, it’s my fault.

However I have a couple of simple tips to eliminate spam.  First, set up a second e-mail address.  Use this e-mail for any website or offer that you sign up for.  Over time if it’s a legitimate offer, move it to a third e-mail address.  Use the third address for newsletters and valid offers.  Notice that I did not suggest that you move it to your primary e-mail address.

Only use your primary e-mail for it’s intended purpose.  If it’s a work e-mail, use it for work.  If it’s a personal e-mail use it for friends and family.  Do not ever, ever, ever put it into a form.  This includes putting it into forms for companies that you trust, such as Disney or Microsoft or Dell.  I am not suggesting that these companies will spam you, but you will get e-mail from them, and potentially from companies they partner with.

So now that you have a new second “spam” e-mail address.  Sign up wherever you want.  You only have to check it right after you sign up for something in case they want you to verify your e-mail address.  Over time, if there’s enough spam in it, throw it away and get another e-mail address.

If you are already being hit with a ton of spam and you can’t change your e-mail address, then you can try a third party program like spamarrest.  They are a demand e-mail system where senders have to verify that they are human and not spam bots.  This can be somewhat annoying to some people who send you e-mail, but so what?  You’re the one with the inbox filled with junk.

PayPal runs a tight ship on security. Even as a first-time buyer, they have all sorts of information about you. They can access records of other sites you have went to and find your e-mail records too, but not for a bad purpose; they judge whether you are a criminal or not.

People leave all sorts of information online, and much of it is harmless. Imagine it as a trail of breadcrumbs; this is what companies use to determine whether you are a potential criminal or not. PayPal tracks these little signs all the way back to the source. Their philosophy is that even safety conscious people leave a small trail while surfing the web, and only criminals are completely untraceable.

PayPal asserts that the secret to their success is their rigorous security measures. Even before they were purchased by Ebay, they had a leg up over the competition by allowing consumers to purchase items and merchandise by credit card. Most companies would not allow this due to the risk of an interception of the transaction, or just a simple inherent fear of trusting an anonymous person over the web with this sensitive information. They have always been more wary of sellers than buyers though, because it would be easy for a vendor to get their money and take their merchandise and skip town, as is the cliché of Internet scammers.

Internet companies have been in lawmakers sights lately over the treatment of information they gather from their surfers, and how well protected it really is. Essentially, these behavioral advertisers track where you have been and bring you related advertisement. That wouldn’t fly in real life, and people are tired of it happening online.

Lawmakers in the House are taking action. They are writing laws and other new documents that propose to limit the amount of unauthorized snooping that goes on when Internet companies look at your browsing histories. They also wish to educate the public on how they could better protect themselves while online.

While the bill is being debated in congress, there is not enough energy to go all around, with health care and energy conservation taking up most of the floor time. The issue isn’t pigeonholed though, and it will up for consideration next year.

Google, Yahoo, and other search engines and sites to be affected by this bill are a bit torn on where they stand: they want people to have their privacy, but at the same time, they make money through these advertisers.

In Ottawa, Canada, there is a pending bill that proposes to allow police complete access to Internet communications. The police say they need to upgrade, for Internet security, laws haven’t been updated in forever, and the laws need to move with the times.

This proposition would force ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to make it possible for police to access their databanks for any reason to extract data about users and particularly their conversations.

This push for more Internet power from police has been going strong for almost ten years, and the police think it has been long enough. They insist that with the dawn of the new technological age, criminals are hiding and doing their dirty work online, a place where it is tough for them to get caught.

The police have no surveillance teams online, and don’t have the ability to dispatch a monitoring force, and certainly aren’t allowed to see what criminals do online. This needs to change for people’s safety they say. The police promise not to abuse their power, and even use a warrant system as in a real-life search.

The Internet is on its last legs in Namibia, Africa. There is a bill waiting to pass that would cripple the net to a point where it would be almost unusable: the banning of encryption.

Encryption is a technique which encodes all data that passes through to an undecipherable format. There are different levels of encryption, measured in “bits”, but even the lowest levels offer a great protection boost.

Getting rid of this technology would basically unlock everything online. Imagine a neighborhood, where every house has a lock and alarm system. Now imagine all of this was deactivated: absolute chaos! Anyone could break in and steal anything from anyone else.

Without encryption, some websites can’t even operate. If you ever see the lock icon in the bottom of your screen, this means the site is encrypted. Every banking site is encrypted, so none of these would work if the feature is banned. It wouldn’t just be banks and business things to go either: MySpace, FaceBook, Gmail, Skype, Yahoo… all gone.

The average American household has access to at least one Internet-ready computer now. That means that every time your family boots up the computer system, you are potentially exposing your information to the rest of the world. In a matter of seconds, your Internet privacy can be compromised by hackers, identity thieves and other criminals who can use your family’s information for illegal and immoral activities. Protect your family’s personal information by utilizing some of the free and low cost Internet privacy software available today.

Internet Surfing History “Erasers” – Whenever you visit websites, check your email or conduct transactions online, your personal web surfing history is stored in your computer cache. Criminals who can access your hard-drive can get to your sensitive personal information, including the keystrokes you’ve made. Even if you try to delete your web browsing history, clear cookies and temporary files from within your Internet browser, this information is still not fully erased from your computer records. There are several Internet surfing history eraser software applications now available that can clear all remnants of your Internet browsing history.

Recently I had the honor of being interviewed by Christopher Avery on Blog Talk Radio.  The topic for the interview was entrepreneurship.  However, given that Privacy Partners is in the Privacy Market, we also discussed Internet Privacy.

This world is all about one thing, information. Every time you connect to the Internet, your every action is being watched, logged and saved in databases all over the world. Most of the time, almost always actually, the information is perfectly harmless and can serve to make your surfing a more enjoyable and quicker experience, However, there are times when knowing how to protect your Internet Privacy as well as knowing when and where you are at risk can be an invaluable bit of knowledge.

Online business, activities and transactions are increasing exponentially each year. That means that a ton of money is flowing through this virtual world, and where there is a lot of money, usually, there is a lot of greed as well. Some people will do anything to make a quick buck, so the average consumer needs to be on guard. Unfortunately, many people are still in the dark when in comes to staying safe online. Everyday, there are more and more people who become victims of internet fraud and scams because they have neglected to take online security seriously.