Hi there, been busy the last few days getting ready to travel again?!
Paranoia doesn't really get you very far. You have nothing to fear, etc... Be cautious of course.... but, I guess my question is... Why are so worried? There are over 300 million people in the US. Why would someone go to the trouble to pick on you? It could happen, of course... but what the chances?
Well, to re-cap, a few realistic scenarios...
1.) I have had people stalk me in the past. Also, I once had the boyfriend of a girl I was arguing with online - and who I never knew in real life - suddenly appear one day at my door after we had a fight on the phone. (After that, I realized how easy it was to find people.)
If it where possible to track my physical laptop - think LoJack - and know exactly where I connect to the Internet, then I suppose someone could track me down...
2.) Bigger concern is that some database somewhere is logging EVERY thing I do online
and tying it back to my Physical Laptop and ultimately Physically to Me.
Why I do not do bad things online, I don't want people knowing if I Googled "Yeast Infection" or my favorite political party's website, or secretly did Google Justin Bieber's image under Google Images, or tracked all of my e-mails or knew all of the sites I frequent, or knew where I bank, or go ahold of the music I listen too, or knew that I stumbled across a porn site when searching for stories on an Australian Girl who Sailed the Globe "Solo", or whatever.
Right or wrong, it DISTURBS me to no end to think that my every keystroke online is being logged, or even that every time I connect to the Internet it is being logged for all time?!
I want to believe it should be relatively easy to take steps to mask things so that I can't be tracked back to my physical laptop - unless the Russian Mafia is after me again?!
I don't need or want 100% anonymity, but I also don't want a dossier of my soul on display for all to judge.
And since the jackasses at my ISP, and bank, and the U.S. Gov't will likely be horribly hacked by Anonymous and China in the next 5 years, I want to do my best to make sure I don't give Anonymous or China every little detail about me.
I feel this is different than how you describe my "paranoia", but that's just me...
You take a risk every time you get into a car.... so you try to make those risks manageable and then you get into a car and navigate the risks. Same thing goes for the internet.
Except MOST mistakes I make driving (e.g. Curb Shot, Running a "Pink" Light, Speeding, Cutting Someone Off) are not held against me forever...
By contrast, I could post something on a website, and it would be there forever, even if I asked the website owner to remove it.
Or, I could surf to a porn website (accidentally), or download a song (illegally), or watch some embarassing video on YouTube (intentionally) and my ISP or the Federal Gov't could keep that in the "Debbie Files" for the rest of my life.
Do you know who Joseph McCarthy was?
Why? Machine IDs and MAC addresses are spoofed everyday. There is a likelihood that someone is using your router's MAC address somewhere else in the world. MAC addresses can be typed into a router, and therefore you can type anybody's MAC address you want. In fact, routers even make it easy to copy your computer's MAC address to themselves so that they can spoof your computer. MAC addresses are useless for tracking somebody simply because they are so easily spoofed. It's like a bouncer asking an 18 year old how old they are at the door of the bar, but never checking the ID.
I don't know that there is. All of those parts can be taken out and replaced by a new one. Which is why tracking a computer is useless. Plus, give it to your niece and the trackers end up tracking the wrong person for a year before they figure out that you haven't suddenly developed a crush on Justin Bieber. The effort just doesn't warrant the gain in most cases, unless you work in very specific industries. like the CIA.
So when I am at home, does my ISP log my MAC address every time I log in?
And when I log in to a free Wi-Fi at Panera, does there ISP also log my MAC address even it it is not entirely unique?
(I'm not as concerned about my IP address when I am away from home, as it isn't very unique...)
Why do you delete them all? Do you really care that that NY Times knows you have been there before
I manually Accept/Reject all cookies.
After maybe a month, I delete all cookies because some may have tracking devices in them that I don't know.
But during the month, I rely on cookies from sites like this to ease logging in.
They don't own your soul... they just think they know what motivates you to buy stuff.
Well, as my wife likes to say... if you ain't paying for the service then you're not the customer, you're the goods they're selling. But we still use FB, and Google, etc. We just be cautious about what we post. The same way I don't tell my friends everything.
Know where I log in, when I log in, using what devices, what I search, where I surf, etc, etc CAN be used against me.
In the 1950's people like Joseph McCarthy destroyed a lot of innocent people's lives because he knew too much...
Wikipedia: Joseph McCarthy
Senator McCarthys zeal to uncover subversion and espionage led to disturbing excesses. His browbeating tactics destroyed careers of people who were not involved in the infiltration of our government. His freewheeling style caused both the Senate and the Subcommittee to revise the rules governing future investigations, and prompted the courts to act to protect the Constitutional rights of witnesses at Congressional hearings ... These hearings are a part of our national past that we can neither afford to forget nor permit to reoccur.[64]
What's not to say there isn't some freak out there now doing the same thing with Internet Log Files and poor little ol Debbie's fate?!
Every year I go "Off Line" more and more, and Credit Cards and the Internet are my last two Achilles Heals...
Nah... I'm just a photographer, and a generalist. But I am pretty level headed, I think. So... take my advice. Block cookies. Encrypt your hard drive. Don't surf to your bank, or other sensitive sites, on a public WiFi.
And relax!
When I get back from my trip, I will re-read this entire thread, and thoroughly check out every awesome link you guys provided.
I am looking into the following...
1.) Getting a "Data Plan" so I can connect to the Internet securely from anywhere
2.) Doing that VPN thingy
3.) Setting up FDE
4.) Surfing Encrypted when possible (Not sure if that is VPN or TOR?!)
5.) Reading up on security
Thanks for all of your help so far!!!
Debbie