You Are Being Tracked Online: Here Are 5 Ways to Protect Your Privacy

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If you listen carefully online, you’ll hear a deep sucking sound -- that's the sound of all your personal data being gobbled up by digital service providers.

March 6, 2012

If you listen carefully when you turn on your smartphone or tablet computer or go online using your computer, you’ll hear a deep sucking sound. That's the sound of all your personal data being gobbled up by a growing array of digital service providers.

On Feb. 23, the White House issued a long-awaited report outlining a framework for personal cyber privacy, “Consumer Data Privacy in a Networked World: A Framework for Protecting Privacy and Promoting Global Innovation in the Global Digital Economy.” Billing itself a "Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights," the report stresses the need for transparency, security, accuracy and a reasonable limits to what is collected.

Unfortunately, this “white paper” is in keeping with the Obama administration’s overall policy of compromise so that both policy and principle meet the vested interests of those with power. As with the banking and financial service regulation or oversight over healthcare providers, insurance companies and big pharma companies, the interests of the digital data collectors and the advertising industry will be furthered while the privacy rights of ordinary digital user will be sacrificed.  READ MORE