A New York federal judge last week ordered Google to turn over records of which users have watched which videos on YouTube, which drew concerns from privacy advocates across the Internet.
Viacom is seeking the information to help build its copyright infringement lawsuit against Google. While it's too soon to tell what will happen as a result of the order, it presents an opportunity to remind everyone be wary of just what information they are making available online.
Most people probably know the basics -- don't click links included in unsolicited e-mails, don't let your children give out personal information to strangers online, and so on -- but there are plenty of other tips that will help you protect your privacy.
The Center for Democracy & Technology is an organization which "seeks practical solutions to enhance free expression and privacy in global communications technologies." A list of privacy protection tips from the center is available at: http://www.cdt.org/privacy/guide/basic/tips.phpl.
One tip is to have an e-mail account for personal use, and a separate account to use when filling out forms online. If you have a Gmail account, you can use the + sign to create an extended email address (such as your.name+spam@gmail.com) that you can give to Web sites. Their messages will appear in your normal inbox, and if you're starting to receive unsolicited spam you'll know exactly where it came from. Just set up a filter and it's gone.
If you would like to stay current on the latest online privacy news, visit the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
The Web site also has a list of practical privacy tools: http://epic.org/privacy/tools.html.
Included are well over 100 links to secure e-mail providers, HTML filters, secure instant messaging programs and Web and file encryption tools.
Both CDT and EPIC also have news pages that will keep you up-to-date on privacy policies and standards as they continue to change.
For a collection of links to current privacy policies for some companies, as well as other information, visit http://www.privacyexchange.org/buscodes/index.html.
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