Friday, October 21, 2011

On Keeping Private

The presence of social networking has already spread through the internet. Among them are the three giants – Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. These have become well-known for their “Like”, “Follow” and “+1” buttons, respectively. Users can now read over a web page and click “Like”. This can be done with almost anything online. In short, many people do like what they read on the web. The problem is that users can be “followed” from every page that contains these sharing buttons even if they do not click them. The users then become targets of advertisements and, worse than this, they could lose a lot of privacy.

Users are being tracked without their knowledge and of course, without their consent. Information sharing technology is now so easy that codes can be embedded in almost every web page. One can observe its use by social networking companies. They do this by embedding codes with the file sharing buttons in a web page. Unknown to the user, the code works as he or she visits the page, recording his or her “presence”, and building a profile of his or her product preferences. In due time, the user becomes a target for advertisements based on the nature of pages that he or she usually opens.

Thanks should go out to Firefox and its new product extension, Priv3, that will allow your visits to be tracked by websites only when you permit them. This tool comes in handy when you are using Firefox. With this, those embedded codes will become powerless. This means that you can surf the web wherever you want without worrying about being tracked. Your presence will not be recorded unless you hit the “Like” button on Facebook or you tweet it with Twitter. Facebook or Twitter will only know that you have been on a particular page only if you hit the share buttons.

Users are guaranteed the same satisfaction even if they use Priv3. This capability will not affect one’s enjoyment of these networking sites. Priv3 is a technology that can go around many of those “blocks” in order to ensure the same high quality of enjoyment for users. Third party sites cannot track your online activities even if you keep logged on to social networking sites. It is because Priv3 prevents them from doing so unless you intentionally give permission. Priv3 comes free for everyone in order to keep their privacy.

Image: tungphoto / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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