Online Privacy - Private email: free, no ads and no snooping by unwanted agencies

Are you ready to get your email privacy back?

Have you forgotten that Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail all read your email and display ads or even worse, sell that infer to advertisers?  Yep, using email in one of those services is akin to selling your profile - you likes and dislikes, your ideas, and whatever else you send as content in your "private" emails.

The solution: a free email that doesn't read the content of your email and sends your email where you want it by encrypting every email so no one can read it while it travels to its' destination.

This email service is based in Iceland. They are the first country where bankers, after being subject to ridicule and protest by most of the Iceland population, actually gave debt forgiveness on most mortgages in the country. read the story on bloomer here: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-20/icelandic-anger-brings-record-debt-relief-in-best-crisis-recovery-story.html.

Unseen is this beneficial free email provider: http://www.unseen.is.  You have to check them out.

They also offer FREE chat with video and phone calling. A great alternative to Skype is owned by Microsoft and yes all the three letter agencies are monitoring your Skype conversations.

The purpose of this blog post is to education you about your online privacy. Stop letting big business sell you identity and private communications to improve their financial success.

Ez Web Manifesting helps you maintain a potent web presence using proven SEO and SEM techniques. Be visible in search engines and get more attention to sell you products and services.

Five Tools to Protect Your Privacy Online

Five Tools to Protect Your Privacy Online


Sovereign Man   Notes From The Field
Five Tools to Protect Your Privacy Online
Feburary 15, 2013

We've discussed many times before--hardly a month goes by without some major action against Internet users... from Obama's 'kill switch', to ACTA, SOPA and PIPA, to stasi tactics against people like Kim Dotcom.

Online privacy is becoming more important by the day. And nobody is going to give it to you, you have to take steps yourself to secure it.

Below are five different tools and services that will get you started:

1. Tor Browser 

Tor is a great weapon in the fight for online anonymity as it allows you to surf the web without giving up your location and other personal data to the websites you visit.

The Tor Browser Bundle is the easiest and most secure way to get started; simply download it, and start surfing the web with the Tor Browser. It's available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Learn more about and download the Tor Browser Bundle here
https://www.torproject.org/index.html.en?inf_contact_key=5f67aea426e05299c7b35c71105593fae6d72d6f1fc869056f378281773a45a7

2. Duck Duck Go 

If you want privacy, don't search with Google.

Google store all of your searches to customize ads for you, but even worse, they can hand over the whole list of searches to any government agency that are curious about what you've been looking at for the last couple years.

A better alternative is Duck Duck Go, a completely anonymous search engine that does not store any information about you or your searches. The search results are essentially identical to Google's, so there's no loss of quality.

Search with Duck Duck Go here https://duckduckgo.com/?inf_contact_key=e6e7d77bac175ec96183b9a3a128daabfcf5b562070af82078c66e0a53957884

3. HTTPS Everywhere 

HTTPS Everywhere is a plug-in for Firefox and Google Chrome that tries to force a website to connect in secure mode, thus encrypting your traffic with the website you are visiting. This makes your browsing more secure because it prevents eavesdropping thieves or state-mafia from intercepting your unencrypted Internet traffic.

Download HTTPS Everywhere here
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere?inf_contact_key=25606ff20579b0ff9dfc6fb866bdbcfaea71608ec16dd4f1d0fcdf3d7985c802

4. Cryptocat

Cryptocat is an encrypted chat that beats Facebook and Skype when it comes to security and privacy. If you want to chat in private then this is one simple solution. It's also open source, which means you can see the full code and be sure there are no government "backdoors" built in.

Read more about and download Cryptocat here
https://crypto.cat/?inf_contact_key=e614b52df58c2852e2ac7110c53e3a8d67ebfeeb40cd88a64f3ac3ec1ead6c5b


5. Silent Circle

Silent Circle is a new player on the market, but it is founded by "old" players in the security and encryption industry. One of the founders, Phil Zimmerman, is also the creator of PGP, one of the most-used encryption platforms in the world.
Silent Circle is a suite of products offering:

- Encrypted email
- Encrypted video chat
- Encrypted phone calls
- Encrypted text messaging

Silent Circle is the only service on this list that is not free. But having the gold standard of encryption may be worth it for you. It is for me.

Read more about Silent Circle here   https://silentcircle.com/?inf_contact_key=dec85d0fd47f1c7e1f1ab2cb5ada744bb37afec46c5190d2a16a35d2bb8d04a7

Bottom Line 

You can set up most of the tools we discussed in 5 minutes. Each of them will go a long way in securing your privacy online.

Do you have a recommended tool or service that should be on the list?
If so, please leave a comment and share it on our website.

Until tomorrow,
Senior Editor, SovereignMan.com 

Computers & Internet: how much does your computer tell others about you

Computers & Internet: how much does your computer tell others about you

Have you ever had the feeling your computer is watching you? That somehow it knows what you were looking at yesterday, or last year?

And that rather than being your technological ‘friend’ it behaves more like a slick second-hand car salesman?

You fancied flying to Paris so you checked out airfares . . . and before you knew it, your Facebook page was plastered with advertisements for hotels on La Rive Gauche.

Your daughter bought a record by One Direction. Now, the family computer is bombarded with ads for boy band concerts.

It is all because of something on your computer called a ‘cookie’. The origins of their name are unclear, but cookies are vital to the running of the internet.

When you visit a website, that site places a unique cookie on your computer so it recognises you when you come back. It allows the website to remember your login details and other pieces of information to save you entering them again and again.

If, say, the site offered up weather information, it might remember that you were interested in conditions over a particular town, and so on.

These devices — known as ‘first party cookies’ because they involve an exchange of information only between you and the site — make shopping on the internet possible.

If you shop for groceries over the internet, for example, cookies allow you to update your shopping trolley day after day, returning as you remember to add new products before moving to the virtual checkout at the end of the week.

And cookies can remember your credit card details to save you having to enter them over and over again. So far, so good.

Problems arise when advertisers get involved. You may think all the websites you visit as you use the net are free, but they aren’t.

In return for using them you automatically part with slices of information about yourself that can be used to send advertisements to the pages you look at as you surf.

This happens because of ‘third-party’ or ‘tracking’ cookies. These are placed on your computer by companies who profit from finding out what interests you or what — from your searches — you are looking to buy.

During one 15-minute surfing period, one investigator’s computer was inundated with 600 cookies, 350 of which were the tracking variety.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2277265/Your-watching-How-sinister-cookies-track-online.html#ixzz2KhpEpu5P 

People want privacy - finally a service to protect your privacy on calls, texts, and email

Surveying consumers in 11 countries around the world, the research firm said 68 per cent of respondents said they would select a 'do not track' feature if this was easily available.

Mark Little, a principal analyst at Ovum, said Internet users were increasingly getting more access to new tools to 'monitor, control and secure their personal data as never before'.

The recent scandal involving privacy breaches by mobile messaging service WhatsApp and lingering concerns over data use policies on Facebook and Google are prompting Internet users to be more guarded, Ovum added.

A new app promises to encrypt all your smartphone communications to make them look and sound like gibberish to anyone trying to listen in.

Startup tech firm Silent Circle say their system is 'a secure information service' which can allow users to communicate via voice, text message, email and even video without fear of being tapped.

The app is already available on both iPhone and Android, and its functionality has recently been broadened to allow users to not only communicate securely but also easily send encrypted files.

The team behind Silent Circle includes Phil Zimmerman, inventor of PGP ecryption, which is still considered the standard for email security, and Phil Zimmerman, former chief scientist at PGP corporation and the developer of Apple's whole-disk encryption.

In an interview with MailOnline, Mr Callas, now chief technology officer at Silent Circle, described it as a 'secure information service.'

‘It’s a subscription service that lets you do secure voice, video and email using a standard mobile device,' he said.

‘Let’s say you are in a war zone, or you are a business traveller in China,’ he said. ‘You might want to talk to someone back home and talk to them about what you are doing there that might be of interest to the local wiretapping environment.’

Silent Circle’s kind of customers, Mr Zimmermann says, ‘see the hacking that’s going on internationally, they know that a lot of services they use collect information and use it to target ads’.

‘People say I’m being watched all the time now. It’s not a Big Brother thing, it’s a little brother thing; it’s all these little things that are eroding our basic privacy.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2274597/How-foil-eavesdroppers-The-smartphone-encryption-app-promises-make-communications-private-again.html#ixzz2KLawp2UQ

New web app uses Google Street View to show exactly where Instagram pictures were taken

New web app uses Google Street View to show exactly where Instagram pictures were taken  

Ha, you thought you were just posting your favorite picture on the web. But, with this app, that college students put together, it's possible to harvest data from that photo to determine where it was snapped. Critics say this is a stalker's dream come true.

More importantly, it just goes to show you that there is no real privacy in what is posted online.

1. Free email services like gmail and yahoo read your email to post ads  on you email pages that's related to what you are talking about in your email.

2. Facebook is selling al the dat in your profile to anyone who will buy it.

3. Now we learn that posting a picture on the web means people with the right application can determine where the photo was taken.

2013 is already proof positive that online privacy is an oxymoron.

The Beat harvests data from Instagram then links the location that photos were taken to images from Google Street View

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2256513/New-web-app-uses-Google-Street-View-exactly-Instagram-pictures-taken.html#ixzz2H4Wi2iE0