You are being watched right now. If someone were to stalk you around all day and took notes about everything you did, you would feel pretty weird about that I’m guessing. (Unless you are into that sorta thing.) Now, imagine you were being followed by hundreds of people in invisibility cloaks taking notes and drawing conclusions about you based on your actions. That is what is happening to you right now if you are browsing the Internet. At least they know you have good taste since you are reading CyberProps. Don’t believe me? Watch this (short) TED Talk by Gary Kovacs as he breaks it down for you:
[ted id=1436]
You can download the plugin he is talking about here: http://collusion.toolness.org/
The Collusion plugin will tell you everyone that is tracking you. Every time you click, another group of trackers will appear… and it keeps growing as you click around. With 15 tabs open, 1000 companies are probably watching me write this. Maybe you are not bothered by this. When I first heard this, I felt more violated than that time I crowd-surfed in a man thong at a Nickleback concert… don’t judge. That is the best comparison I could come up with, and it doesn’t even do it justice. A few shots of Jack and some therapy, and you can repress that. When it comes to your online behavior, the Internet’s memory is forever. Everything you have ever done has been recorded in a file in some company’s database. They will probably make money with your information too.
But there is something you can do! I came across this great site called Disconnect.Me. It protects you from over 2000+ Internet stalkers. Even if you don’t care about being stalked, you probably care about speed. The second I downloaded it, my browser became noticeably faster. And it’s completely FREE. They offer 4 great products:
- Private Browsing: Stops the stalkers and increases your browser speed.
- Private Search: Prevents search engines from tracking everything you search.
- Disconnect Mobile: Same thing, except for your phone.
- Secure Wireless: A new, smarter VPN that stops wireless eavesdropping over Wi-Fi, 3G, and 4G
- They have a couple other products, but these are the ones I downloaded and installed.
I am writing this partially because I think everyone deserves to know they are being tracked, but I mainly just want to give PROPS to Disconnect for offering this protection from the companies that show no respect for privacy. Hopefully, people continue to donate and Disconnect continues to create a better World Wide Web for us all to enjoy.
I was just kidding about that Nickleback thing…
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