Keep Tabs on Your Online Shadow

This Saturday, Groundhog Day, we will look to see if Punxsutawney Phil will emerge from his burrow and see his shadow. Most of us in the northeastern part of the country eagerly hope that, in fact, he does not see his shadow for a quick start to spring.   

Punxsutawney’s shadow made me think about a growing area of concern when it comes to Internet safety - the protection of the online data in your web browsers.    Like the groundhog’s shadow, your web browser essentially has a shadow of really important information (“user data”), such as your name, date of birth, sites visited, political interests, etc. According to the online privacy company Abine Inc., over 25% of what a web browser does when it loads is respond to requests that will track data like this. According to Abine, Google makes 20.28% of all tracking requests on the web, while Facebook makes 18.84% of all tracking requests on the web. So your online shadow is very valuable, and it’s worth understanding more about how it can be tracked.

• It’s not just about “cookies”: Many of you have heard of cookies and may take steps to manage them (e.g., blocking them in your web browser). But there are many other methods that advertisers and merchants use to collect information.    JavaScript, which is code that can instruct a web page to take certain tracking action, is the most common type of tracker currently used. In addition, “web beacons” are images that can be invisible to users, but are stored on a web page (or email) and are used to monitor a user’s activity.  
• Social Networking Sites (SNS) play an important role: You may already realize that when you “Like” something on a SNS, this information will be used to tailor future ads or promotions. But did you know that if you are an SNS user, the mere fact that you visit a third party website means the SNS can capture your user data? For example, say you visit a clothing store’s web site, and you notice they have social networking integration (e.g, a “Like” button). Even if you don’t click on the “Like” button, the JavaScript in the button can collect certain user data and send it to the SNS. The information provided in this request, which comes from your machine to the SNS, may include your IP address (that can be used to show your general geographic area), browser type and version, the page you're on, any SNS cookies on your machine (which include your unique SNS user ID), and potentially more information.  
• Expect some changes: Facebook changed its privacy policy in December 2012, which may affect how this information is used. You can read Facebook’s privacy policy here.

So what can you do to manage your online experience and information? 

1. Security software is an important first step because it often contains options to turn cookies off (although as described above, that’s only a partial solution).  Xfinity Internet customers may use Constant Guard, a comprehensive collection of online security tools.  
2. Read the privacy policies of the sites you are interacting with, especially Social Networking Sites.   At the end of the day, you’ll need to decide what’s right for you – but the fine print here is really important.
3. There is a growing field of software that you can add to your browser that easily lets you choose to block or allow trackers.  One such browser add-on is DoNotTrackMe from the online privacy company Abine. Learn more here.

Happy Surfing!

Gloucester County resident Jim Janco is Director of Security and Privacy for Comcast and a father of four children.  Read more tips about online safety at xfinity.com/constantguard