What is the Solution to Being Banned from a Website?

Being banned from a website is a problem that many Internet users are faced with.  It can happen if you post too much or post inappropriate content.  It may not even be something you did.  It could be that for whatever reason, the Webmaster just doesn’t like what you are posting.   If you agree with the ban or not, the decision has been made.  So, is there a solution?

You would think that deleting your cookies and creating a new username and password will by-pass that ban, but that isn’t the case.  You see, when you are banned from a website, not only are your username and password banned, but your IP Address is banned as well.  Don’t panic; the situation isn’t hopeless.

Changing your IP Address can be done in a few ways:  1) Go to your local public hotspot whenever you want to go onto the banned site (but that isn’t convenient at all); 2) switch Internet Service Providers (but that would cost too much, especially if you are locked into a contract with your old ISP); or 3) you can find a proxy service that has multiple servers for you to choose from.

Changing your IP Address by using a proxy service is the easiest and most convenient way to do this.  It can be done at any time right from home.  You would need to delete your cookies then pick which proxy server you want to sign on with.  Go to the website, create your new username and password and you will be good to go.  Since the IP Address is that of the proxy, you will no longer be banned.  Just be careful not to get banned again.  True, you would have many proxy servers to choose from, but remember that if you get banned from the website using the proxy, any other members of that service will also be banned from that website if they happen to use your banned IP Address.  Just read and understand the rules of the website and this shouldn’t be a problem.

Getting on banned websites isn’t the only advantage to using a proxy server.  When you use a reputable service, your line of communication is always encrypted no matter where you are; at a public hotspot or at home using your wireless router.  The encryption will keep you safe from hackers because none of your information will be readable to them.  Make sure you use a reputable service because sometimes those free proxies are owned and run by some shady characters that monitor the lines and sell your information.  You won’t have that worry with a reputable service because the lines will be encrypted and unmonitored.  

My information and privacy is important to me, so I use Private Proxy.  No matter where I go, my information is safe.  Try it for yourself by going to the Home page and use the link for the Risk Free Trial.  You could be surfing the Internet safely within minutes.

What are the Advantages of Using a Proxy Server?

I have been asked many times if it’s worth it to use a proxy server.  My answer is always an emphatic “YES”!  

I travel a lot.  Since my means of transportation is usually a car, I often work while on the road.  This means using public hotspots, whether it’s when I stop at Starbucks for a quick snack, or when I stop for the night at a motel.  This always worried me before I started using Private Proxy’s proxy servers.  You never know if someone at the next table or in the next room is a hacker, but now, I don’t have to worry because I know that everything I send out from my computer is encrypted.  Sure, you can find some free proxies, but some may not be so trustworthy.  Because they’re free, they can be used by anyone and they are usually not encrypted, so you’re not really safe from hacking.  You also have to be careful because some of these proxies are monitored by the owners of the sites.  By monitoring, they can get your personal information.  

Another advantage is that no one knows when I’m traveling or when I’m at home.  With Private Proxy, I have a choice of many servers, both rotating and static, in many areas of the United States, Canada and the Netherlands.  This way, I can use a server in my area of the country when I want my travels to remain private or, I can choose a server across the country when I’m invited to the hundredth kid’s birthday party of the year at Chuck E Cheese!  After all, there is a limit on how much bad pizza and how many screaming kids one person can take.  

Even when I travel outside of the United States, I can still keep in touch with friends, family and my local news.  Since some websites aren’t available all over the world, all I have to do is choose which one of the US servers I would like to use and no matter where I am, the Internet will be “fooled” into thinking I’m home.  I will then have access to sites that would normally be blocked in whatever country I’m traveling in.  I can watch my favorite TV shows, read my local newspapers and shop on sites that would only be available to me in the United States.  All of this without worrying that someone could steal my information by breaking into my data stream.

When I chose Private Proxy as my proxy service, encryption was one of the major selling points.  I like knowing that no matter where I go in the world, even if I’m just around the corner or at home using my wireless router, no one will be able to grab my information and use it to their advantage.  Also, the proxies are never monitored and only Private Proxy clients have access to their servers.  Add that to the choice of multiple servers in different areas of the United States, Canada and the Netherlands and I was hooked.  

Private Proxy offers a free trial period so you can see all the advantages for yourself.  Simply go to the home page and click on the link for the Risk Free Trial at the right of the screen. 

Are Our Privacy Rules Changing?

Do you realize how much information is gathered from your smartphone?  This is something most people use every day, but not just to make calls.  It is also used to surf the Internet, send e-mails and update social networking.  Many people even use their smartphones as a GPS.  Because of its many functions, your smartphone holds information on your location, your e-mail contacts and your favorite Internet sites.   In other words, your smartphone is yet another way you can be tracked on-line. 

It seems like every month new apps are being developed for smartphones and tablets.  In fact, the smartphone is probably used less to make calls than to surf the Internet.  You can use Google Maps to find any location in the world, you can keep up with your office e-mail and you can even use GasBuddy to find the least expensive gas in the area.  When you’re ready for a break, you can play your favorite on-line games!  All this can be done with one device.  You can be traveling, yet you’ll never be far from your office or home.  You can even access sites that can help you out with a solution if you don’t know how to handle your two-year-old’s tantrums or medical sites that can tell you what that strange rash on your leg is.

Yes, these apps are a fantastic convenience, but they also leave us open for tracking.  Many people find that the convenience far out-weighs the risk of being tracked.  After all, isn’t it better to have access to all of these great sites if it means all you have to do is enter your zip code and your birth date?  There are thousands of people in that zip code with the same birth date, so what could be the harm?  Well, thousands of people aren’t using YOUR smartphone!

With this information, you are opening yourself up to being tracked by advertisers.  This can happen because many sites share the gathered information with others. They know your location from your GPS, so with your zip code, birth date and the knowledge of what sites you visit on-line added in with your e-mail address, you are going to get a whole lot of targeted advertisements in your inbox.  You could also be given suggestions for even more apps to either purchase or download for free.

These app developers claim that in order to get the full benefits, some personal information is needed.  Congress has discussed the issue of these apps as a privacy risk.  It has also been discussed that consumers should be allowed to opt out of being tracked, but so far, not much has been done to remedy this.

Parents: Do You Know Who Your Children are Chatting With?

I spend a lot of time on the Internet researching popular sites and I notice a very disturbing trend:  parents have given their children free reign over the Internet.  It has been said that in the 60s and 70s, the television was used by busy parents as a babysitter.  Well, now in the 21^st century, the Internet has taken over that function.  The difference between the television and the Internet is that the television didn’t have the capability to try to lure children away from home.  Sure, there were interactive shows like Winky Dink, where a child could put a clear vinyl sheet over the television screen and connect the dots to draw the item that Winky needed to save the day, but Winky Dink never talked one on one to any child.  Not so with the Internet.  This leads to the question, “Parents: Do you know who your children are chatting with on-line?”  

With children getting their own computers and laptops at younger and younger ages, there should be rules set and followed for the use of this equipment.  The main rule should be that no child under the age of 16 should have a web-cam/Internet equipped computer in his or her room.  I find it unbelievable that parents who will not allow their young children to walk to school alone will allow them to wander freely around the Internet.  One of the sites that tweens and young teens seem to be latching on to is Omegle.  Parents, beware!

Omegle is an unmonitored site that was started on March 25, 2009 by then 18 year old Leif K-Brooks.  Within a month of the start date, Omegle had in excess of 150,000 users each month.  The site was set up to be an anonymous chat site where strangers who would never otherwise have an opportunity to meet, could chat on-line.  The site is open to anyone without the need to register and there is no cost for its use.   Sure, there is a disclaimer that a user must be 18 years old to chat, but, as we all know, anyone can be any age they want to be on the Internet. 

In the beginning, the site was text chat only.  Now, it offers both text and video chat.  Kids and chatting with strangers via text is a nightmare in itself, but when you add video to the mix, results can be disastrous.  A very public instance of the dangers of video chatting with strangers is the story of Amanda Todd, a Canadian teenager who committed suicide in October 2012.  When Amanda was 13 years old, she discovered video chat and loved that males of all ages would comment about her beauty.  During one of her chats, a male told her that she was gorgeous and wanted to see more of her.  He convinced her to show her breasts on camera.  This person took a screenshot of the video and spread it all over the Internet. 

Instagram Claims Right to Sell Photos

Early in 2012, Facebook approached the founders of Instagram with a $1 billion deal to buy the fledgling Internet photo company.  In September 2012, the deal was finalized for reportedly $750 million.  Good news for Instagram, but bad news for anyone who posted one or more of the 5 billion photos.  Why?  Because now, with Facebook owning Instagram they have the right to sell any of these photos.

The policy to sell user photos was supposed to take effect on January 16, 2013, which was 3 months after Facebook’s purchase.  According to this new policy, Facebook is claiming their right to sell Instagram photos without notifying or paying the original poster.  The only way to avoid this happening to you is if you deleted your Instagram account before the January 16^th deadline.  News of this caused an uproar among users.   

But how will this new Instagram policy affect users’ privacy?  If you have an account that hasn’t been deleted prior to the January 16, 2013 deadline, any of your photos could be sold to advertisers.  In other words, that picture of you in your bikini while you were on Spring break, holding up a bottle of Coors Light, could be sold to Coors and used in one of their advertisements.  Imagine your surprise when you see this picture on a billboard!  Instagram will be making money for Facebook from Coors, Coors will be making money from the advertisement and you will be making nothing at all for your part in all of this.

Kurt Opsahl, Senior Staff Attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation says of this new policy, “It’s asking people to agree to unspecified future commercial use of their photos.  That makes it challenging for someone to give informed consent to that deal.”

Because there is nothing specified, this leaves an endless list of possibilities for exploitation of user photos.  Travel agencies, airlines and resorts can all use your photos in magazine ads, brochures, Internet advertising, television advertising, etc.  All they have to do is pay the fee to Facebook and your Instagram photo is now theirs to use as they see fit.  There is no limit to what types of photos will be sold.  This means that if you post a picture of your children playing in the sands of a tropical island, your children could be the subject of an advertisement.  

Facebook Finds a New Way to Make Money Off of You

Facebook now has a new feature:  Promote and Share.  This feature allows all Facebook members to promote posts made by their friends.  Of course, to do this, there will be a fee.  You can now choose to “Promote and Share” any post made by any friend, for a $7 fee.  The posts promoted do take into consideration privacy settings, but there is no way to opt out of this.  The feature is causing some privacy concerns because the friends whose posts you’re sharing have no say in the matter. 

According to Facebook, this feature has been added because they felt there was a need.  It is said to be beneficial to all Facebook members by allowing them to make others aware of special events in a friend’s life.  This includes such things as landing a new job, welcoming a new member into the family, graduations or good deeds.

A statement issued by Facebook said, “This feature respects the privacy of the original poster – i.e. it will promote to everyone who originally saw it.  You can only promote posts to the people that your friend originally shared with.  If you have mutual friends, they’ll see that you shared it and promoted it.”

Some may not see the need to spend $7 to promote a post since the only people who can see the promoted and shared information are the ones who were originally allowed to see it.  What would be the advantage of such a feature?  The “advantage” would be that it would bring the post higher up on the news feeds, so if a mutual friend missed the original post, he or she would most likely see the promoted and shared post.

Can Your GPS Lead a Stranger to Your Door?

Nowadays, almost everyone has a GPS.  As you drive down the highways and back roads, just about every car you see has one attached to the windshield.  Some newer models of cars come with the GPS as either a standard feature or an option.  A GPS doesn’t only tell you how to get where you’re going; it also tells you when you should be arriving.   If one of the roads you need is closed, or if traffic is unusually heavy, the GPS will tell you which detour to take.  For these reasons, I’m addicted to my GPS, just like millions of other people.

Yes, the GPS is a huge part of our lives, but do we ever think about how we can be risking our safety by using it?  Think of all the information about you that a criminal can get just by looking through your GPS’s “Favorite Places”.   Below is a scenario that is played over and over all over the country:

You just got a promotion at your job.  Along with this came a very large raise, so, to celebrate, you and your husband go out for a night on the town.  Your first stop is that new nightclub that opened a few weeks ago because a band that you both love is playing there.   You know the address, but aren’t sure how to get there, so you program it into your GPS.  You get to the club and hand your car over to the valet so you don’t have to walk unfamiliar streets to find it later.  If you have an in-dash GPS, it’s all but forgotten, but if you have a portable GPS, you stash it in the glove box so it’s out of sight.

Maybe your husband comments about the band and how long it’s been since you’ve both been to one of their concerts.  You tell him that you can’t wait and will savor every minute until the club closes and you are forced to leave.  During this conversation, the valet has heard every word.  He also noticed where you put your portable GPS, or that you didn’t turn off your in-dash GPS.  Who is this person that you just handed your car to?  Does he have a criminal background?  Well, whoever this person is, he now knows your plans for the entire evening.

The valet is doing a quick scan of your keys as you are walking into the club.  He notices that you are like thousands of others who keep their house keys on the same key ring as your car key.  He then takes your car and parks it.  He reaches for your GPS and scans your list of “Favorite Places”.  He hits the jackpot when he sees an entry listed as “Home”.