Your McAfee Internet Security To-do List
Conversely, cookies can record “what you did” on a particular Web site. For example, you visit one of the major search engine’s Web site and shop for an automobile. You revisit the same Web site a few days later and shop for an automobile again. The following week, you turn on your computer and go directly the same Web site. This time you’re looking for the local weather forecast. As the page loads into memory, there are ads for autos all over the screen. The cookie retained information about your past actions at their Web site. The Web page displayed information based upon what was stored in the cookies.
To maintain privacy on the Internet, filter cookies. This allows you to select only those cookies that are truly good cookies. Additionally, you should delete unwanted cookies as you complete an Internet session, to remove the footprints resulting from your travels in the digital highway.
nBlock Web bugs.
Web bugs are very small graphic files, usually 1 pixel by 1 pixel in size (hence the term "bug" or invisible) that send messages to third parties about your Internet browsing habits. Third parties use this information to create user profiles. Web bugs have been known to capture the date and time the Web bug was accessed, the browser version used and even the IP address of the computer that received the Web bug.
To maintain your privacy against Web bugs, always block Web bugs.
nProtect your identity.
It you want to make a purchase online, do not provide personal information (name, address, credit card numbers) unless the Web Site uses Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption. You can recognize secured sites if the Web site's URL begins with https://.
It is also makes for good practice to use software that monitors your Internet connection and warns you if there is an attempt to transmit personal information over the Internet. This type of software requires that you create a database of information about you and the other users of the computer; thus establishing a record of that which should not be transmitted via the Internet.
Remove records of where browsed the Internet from your computer. As you browse the Internet, your browser stores files in a repository called Temporary Internet or "cache" files. Basically, as you revisit a Web site or click your browser's Back button, rather than download all of the graphics displayed on the Web page, your browser reloads the cached files. In a location on your hard disk labeled History, your browser records all of the URLs visited as well s the URLs that you typed into your browser's address bar. All of these records reveal information about where you’ve been on the Internet.
112 McAfee Internet Security 5.0