Internet Explorer 9 automatically sends your entire browsing history to Microsoft if you have “Suggested sites” enabled. Your data is sent to Microsoft (essentially they’re tracking your movements on the Web). Microsoft saves your browsing history and correlates it and uses it to find sites similar to those you’ve visited. Microsoft then uses the data collected from you to serve up Internet Explorer 9’s “Suggested sites” when you click on the Suggested Sites button on your IE9 Favorites bar.
Personally, we don’t get all worked up about some company following us around the Web. As we’ve written before, you can’t stop everyone from tracking you. If you think you can, try to stop your ISP from tracking you. You can’t. They’re required to keep server logs. So even those who are paranoid about being followed, and take every possible precaution, are being tracked at least by their ISP.
Then again, how many of you actually use “Suggested Sites” in Internet Explorer? Ah! No one raised their hands. Yes, EB? You say you never even noticed the Suggested Sites button? Don’t feel bad – I’m sure many others haven’t noticed it either.
If you don’t use “Suggested Sites” then why not turn it off. That will be at least one less company following you around the Web. If you’re paranoid about people following you around the Web – this won’t stop all of them but it will stop Internet Explorer 9 from gathering information about your travels on the Web. So here’s how to turn off Suggested Sites in Internet Explorer 9:
Clear the gear-icon to open the tools menu
Click on “Internet options”
Click the “Advanced” tab in the Internet options dialog
Uncheck “Enable Suggested Sites”
Click Apply and then OK
If you don’t use Suggested Sites, you may as well turn it off. It’s not the tracking that bothers us, it’s all that information flow slowing things down that does :-).
This comes from a reliable resource:
Your ISP can’t track you if you are using a vpn tunnel or ssh or a proxy with encryption.
I often use a combination of tactics depending upon what I am doing.
Open vpn is the protocol you are looking for and it is wise to disable IPv6 when using it.
This comes at a price however based on the situation and what a person is trying to accomplish.
There is a hole in the protocol which uses plain text for the ISP to identify the URL’s one is visiting.
Trackers can be trounced with different things – I like ghostery which is a firefox add on.
Ghostery isn’t a silver bullet but it sure does put a damper on tracking entities.
Use In Private Browsing in fire fox. IE has something like it also.
The gov’t man would have to subpoena not the ISP but the VPN provider in order to get their logs which if one does their research – some keep logs some don’t.
No one ever knows for sure on the user end, but it is nice to know that log files take up an exorbitant amount of space and cost these companies tons of money to maintain.
That’s why log files really only go so far back into the past say one to three months.
Unless there is someone who is monitoring you.
In closing, it must be said that today – there truly is neither anonymity nor privacy on the internet any more. That is a thing of the not too distant past.
If they want you they will collect your a$$ and make a personal project of you. So not bringing attention to ones self to begin with is the biggest asset. Then employing the techniques mentioned above
This would a dream for a criminal, a terrorist, a thief, computer hacker, or a pedophile – if it were true. Of course, it isn’t true. It’s just another example of the kinds of misinformation being disseminated every day on the Web. Don’t you think terrorists and criminals wouldn’t be using this magical VPN if it actually prevented an ISP from logging activities? It’s just another way to extract money from people who would actually pay for VPN tunneling. And yes you can set up VPN free on your own computer – however that VPN would start at your modem – not before it.
If you want to believe that VPN can prevent your ISP from logging you – that’s fine. But don’t depend on it. There are many people in jail right now, I imagine, who really believed in the magic of VPN.
By-the-way…log files take up hardly any space. They’re text files. A few billion bites of data is only a few gigabytes. Hard drives run into the terabytes. ISP used data centers with hundreds of servers with hundreds of terabyte hard drives. It’s hard to imagine how a few billion bytes of user information (log) amounts to much of a worry about drive space. All those logs are collated and referenced and dated. And ISPs keep logs for longer than 3 months. They keep them for at least a year – sometimes two. I got this information directly from a major ISP – not from a “security” web site. They’re required by law to keep them for specified amount of time. The length of time depends on the location of the ISP.
Wireless providers (cell phones) also keep logs. Some people think turning “location” off keep them from being followed. Again, many who believed that and committed criminal acts, are now sitting in jail. All calls are logged and the location determined down to a few feet by triangulation.
Ghostery shows you a lot of scary information – all those advertisers and ad networks tracking you! If you think that puts you in grave danger that’s fine. But if you worry about all that stuff Ghostery shows you and not about the really important things – you could get into trouble.
There is so much misinformation going around the Web. People will believe whatever they choose to believe.
TC
whenever i book mark a page it gets disappeared from my “favourites tab” after few days i want to know why is it happening