Geek Post
Friday, June 16 2006 @ 04:12 PM MDT
Contributed by: Bill
Views: 1,044
This Internet thing is pretty cool. I always like to be interactive with the sites that I visit. It makes being on-line seem more real. That's where the trouble can start. The web has a way of drawing you in and masking the fact that it is all digital.
The people you are communicating with could be the type that you would never even approach in real life. I am listing things that you can do to be more secure on-line. You hear that all the time, but here it goes anyway.
A lot of web sites use soft-ware called analytics. This type of script asks your browser for information. Basically, it gets your IP address and tracks it back to your(ISP), Internet Service Provider. By law, the ISP can't give out information about an IP address. Only with a court order will an ISP give out personal information. “That's a good thing”, quoting Martha Stewart. Any way, the location of your ISP is more than likely in the city that you live in. In this case the unsavory web stalker can just look up your name in the phone book. When the ISP is in a different location, a neighboring city or another state perhaps you are only a little bit harder to track down.
In this section I will describe certain actions that you can take to help hide your location from creeps and scam artists.
Never use your real last name in a profile. Never list your real hometown. Be careful when chatting and posting comments. Do not reveal to much about your real identity. Blogs are crawled by search engines frequently, both posts and comments. Try doing a search for your profile name, the one you use when posting to blogs. I think you will be very surprised.
