If you are tired of receiving junk mail, spam and annoying telemarketing phone calls, then this list is for you. If you desire to take steps to stop the snooping from the government, hackers and marketing agencies, then this list will show you the way to privacy freedom.
People probably don’t realize, just how often and in how many ways that total strangers are snooping in their lives. Whether the snooping means are video cameras, cell phones or through the Internet there are thousands of businesses, people and governments all up our personal business and lives.
Every time a person fills out a contest entry, sweepstakes form, survey application or joins an online community, then chances are the personal information that is used to complete these things are sold, rented or shared with second and third parties without our knowledge.
Most reputable companies or websites will have a privacy statement that explains clearly how they will use the personal information that they collect from their members or customers. Not all websites or companies are reputable, so it is extremely wise to read their privacy statements before handing over any revealing or personal information about you to strangers.
The following websites are extremely useful to help stop big brother from snooping into your personal business and private lives.
-
PGP
PGP provides cryptographic privacy and authentication that is designed to protect email sent and received between two or more parties from being compromised by outside sources. This is an awesome email encryption program that really works great and is especially useful for sending and receiving important business email.
-
GuerrillaMail
An excellent way to stop potentially a bunch of unwanted spam from clogging up your inbox is to use GuerrillaMail, so to get a disposable email address to use anytime your personal email address in required. The email expires in 15 minutes, just long enough to send or receive whatever is desired.
-
PookMail
Stop sharing your real email address with every website that ask for it, but instead make up an imaginary email address using this website. Using this service for a while I have noticed a noticeable difference in the amount of spam that I have been receiving…considerably less. The email associated with your account is cleared every 24 hours allowing you to remain anonymous and still have fun.
-
Anonymous Speech
Every time you send or receive a traditional email there are companies, governments and private individuals tracking your every move and storing these emails on both public and private servers. Anonymous Speech has an extremely secure email service that continues to provide outstanding email protection long after the email has been sent or received. This company does not share their client’s personal information or email access with anyone and that does include government agencies and corporate entities. This program will not disappoint anyone who wants to remain anonymous when surfing the web.
-
Obviously
This is an outstanding Do-It-Yourself website that shows you how to stop those pesky telemarketing phone calls and how to remove your personal information from marketing mailing lists, so to stop junk mail.
-
Double Click
This company is the nerve center of digital marketing as the company self describes its self, but in reality, Double Click has probably collected some personal information about every person using the Internet at some point and time. They sell personal information collected to third parties for marketing purposes and the company will share the information that they collect on you with judicial or other government subpoenas, warrants or orders. Have your name and information removed from Double Click servers using the link above.
-
The Cloak
Hide your web surfing activities from prying eyes and snoops while using this website to surf the net anonymously. The encrypted connection hides your identity from the sites that you are visiting using an http and https anonymous proxy. Your privacy is personal – get it.
-
BeHidden
Here is another anonymous web surfing search engine that protects the surfer’s person identity and web activities from being compromised by nosy webmasters, corporations, and governments. Also, BeHidden can be used to send anonymous email, so to further protect your identity. Awesome site!
-
Government Public Records Database
Access the same databases as law enforcement and government officials do, so to request a copy of your FBI file. Yes it is true, the FBI compiles records concerning private citizens within the United States and you may be one of the people that the FBI has been watching. Excellent website tool for business operators, too.
-
Snarfed
This is an outstanding blog about protecting your privacy when shopping on the Internet and what type of disposable credit or debit cards to use and how they work. Not all-disposable credit cards are made equally as some card programs will protect you better than others will. There is a lot of information here on this blog about privacy issues and there is a little something on here for everyone.
Remember, every time that you fill-out a contest or sweepstakes entry form or complete a survey your personal information is being collected and stored in some stranger’s computer server somewhere. Each time a person joins another social network (
MySpace,
Facebook
) or signs up to participate in an online forum; your personal information is being collected.
What or how these companies use your personal and private information depends on the company doing the collecting. Before doing business with or disclosing your personal information to, be sure to read the company’s or website’s privacy statement carefully, before disclosing anything to them. If the company or website does not have a privacy statement or the privacy statement looks suspicious, then avoid disclosing anything about you or anyone else to these types of companies and/or websites.
November 28th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
Great info. Thank you.
November 29th, 2007 at 5:34 am
This is a fab article. I’m sure it’ll do very well.
November 29th, 2007 at 9:51 am
Great information! You really did your research, good job!!
November 29th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
“you may be one of the people that the FBI has been watching”
And if you are not, you soon will be after asking for your records.
November 29th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
Great article! I’m not sure how I exactly feel about the Government Public Records Database, though. Provided it lives up to it’s claim, is public “access to the same Databases as Law Enforcement and Government Officials” really stopping Big Brother from snooping, or is it simply inviting anyone with $29.95 to become Big Brother’s little sis?
November 30th, 2007 at 12:30 am
why is the “government records” site a .com anyway. Seems ironic
November 30th, 2007 at 2:15 am
add Firefox browser! Set cookies to auto delete and don’t worry about Double click
November 30th, 2007 at 2:40 am
http://janusvm.com/ is really good
November 30th, 2007 at 5:55 am
@xxx: Cookies aren’t the problem. Plus you loose functionality with that.
November 30th, 2007 at 11:41 am
From what I remember PGP years ago added a backdoor that only our Federal goivernment had access to. So essentially if Big Brother wants to read something that is PGP encrypted they can..
November 30th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
Here’s another service to surf anonymous http://dissimul.us enjoy
November 30th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
I have nothing to hide and don’t care who looks into my mail or phone or when they do so! So what? If it catches terrorists or bad guys…..GOOD. We have too many PUKES hiding behind protections set up for law abiding citizens and not perverted criminals. And I’m not a conservative Christian!
November 30th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
Hi Zurich -
No, I really am not getting paid from any of the companies that I listed in my article. I would disclose that information if I were.
You can go directly through the government (county by county, state by state, and city by city, but it is not going to be easy or cheap. As I said before, the government charges copying fees and shipping fees to get copies of the records that a person seeks.
I am going to submit a replace website to replace the Government Public Records Database to my publisher asap, so that this weak point of the article will be removed.
November 30th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
It should be noted that you have to pay for that government records database website.
November 30th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
Well the safest way is dont use the Internet:)))
You saw what happned to HushMail…. They gave you UP… Trust no one
December 1st, 2007 at 7:38 am
I agree with Larry. That is how I do it.
December 1st, 2007 at 9:32 am
Mr. Doyle, thank you for a very helpful article.
December 15th, 2007 at 8:39 pm
Also, just about anything that installs a toolbar in your browser. StumbleUpon, Google, Yahoo.. Read the fine print in the user agreements. They watch and record anything in your browser window.
December 23rd, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Thanks for the information, Nelson. This is worth sending the link on to my friends. Everyone should be aware of this.
December 27th, 2007 at 12:40 pm
Think long and hard before relying on an anonymizer … all you can be certain of is that your info stopped at their server. You have no clue what THEY did with it after that or even that their services are not simply a way of identifying people who are acting like they have something worth hiding.
I much prefer the idea of GPG (or other encryption schemes such as TrueCrypt) being more commonly used. The sheer volume of encrypted material would soon overwhelm the ability to decrypt it or even to identify useful targets to investigate.
The practical problem with this is that the people I most often write emails to are not geeky enough to understand either the need for encryption or the practical means to achieve it.
Stumble! sent me to this site. So that is a two-edged sword, no?
December 31st, 2007 at 11:26 am
hahahaha…. i had tried to open the link given for cloak & behidden. These sites have been blocked by the internet provider. I live in UAE ( united arab emirates). It sort of shows how much snooping is done here!!!
to the author: Nice work. thanks a lot.
April 28th, 2008 at 10:56 am
for ur info network 10 please can you axe BIG BROTHER. forever in boring and alot of people are sick of it. its a boring show.
October 27th, 2008 at 10:34 am
Great Article, but you should include this website as well, for the British:
http://www.checkpointcallprevention.com
Cheers!
January 26th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Great article but you should add http://www.thetrashmail.com
January 26th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Great article but you should add”>http://www.thetrashmail.com
August 7th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
many of these sites are banned; ie you can’t use the disposable email because they are recognized
December 11th, 2009 at 9:52 am
I imagine at least one of these companies is government run
December 24th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Thank you, this is very useful. I think one element that is missing is the the government use of tracking objects and flash cookies installed on users computers to track their web behavior. I found out about this a little while ago and found a program called Little Brother Privacy at http://www.littlebrotherprivacy.com that removes and blocks these cookies. It seems to work very well and I have been pretty happy with it.