Online Privacy Software

Online privacy has started to present our society with somewhat of a dilema. Are these online privacy products helping normal citizens protect their civil liberties or are they letting the bad guys operate without the watchful eye of law enforcement? This very basic civil liberties debate has long presented itself with every new technological event and forms an integral part of the debate in an open and democratic society. And so we must continue to look at ways to protect our online privacy as the underlying dialog continues.

People fail to realize that their computers hold a wealth of information - and not all of it is what they have authored or referenced, alot of it is personal information that is being collected without their knowledge. Every file you have opened or created, every website you visited, every image you viewed, every link you clicked and information to a whole lot more is sitting on your computer. And the real kicker is that even if you could figure out where all of this is being stored, you often cannot delete it, ateast completely. With such a scenerio in mind, we look at some privacy tools that can be of great help in cleaning up your computer.

Anonymizer Review

Anonymizer Private Surfing
Anonymizer is a basic surfing protection system that will allow you to surf 'anonymously' - that is it won't allow website owner and potential spammers from tracking your movements using sophisticated cookies and other script code. It can also help you stop those pesky popups, manage your cookies, delete unwanted files, and overall 'clean your tracks' after a surfing session. It is priced at the lower range at only $9.95 per quarter or $29.99 per year.

McAfee Online Privacy Review

McAfee Privacy Services
McAfee's Privacy Service combines family filters with online private surfing. It can protect your children from inappropriate material on the Internet by using simple age-based access levels for every member of the family. Privacy Service also helps prevent your personal information from being transmitted over the Internet. It can monitor chat sessions for inappropriate activity, use keywords for website content filtering, has a large and continually updated database of obsene sites, enables you to select which cookies to allow or discard and can log the Internet activity of each user. Price wise, McAfee comes in as one of the cheapest Internet privacy solutions with a yearly subscription costing only $29.95.

Spyware Nuker Review

Spyware Nuker
Have you ever downloaded music online? When you surf online, do you get pop up ads? If so, there's a good chance your PC is infected with a potentially harmful new generation of malicious software referred to as "Spyware", "Scumware" or "Adware". Spyware or Scumware are programs that install without the user's knowledge, run in the background and collect information on your Internet usage, sending it to unknown companies who in turn sell that data or use it for whatever purposes. Adware is software that will show you popup ads over and over again. These malicious software programs usually result in your computer running much slower due to the installtion and execution of unnecessary software and more importantly are a major threat to individual privacy. Spyware Nuker purports to rid you computer of such programs, retails for $29.99 and offers a "free checkup" to determine whether your computer is clean or infected with "Spyware" or "Adware".

Spam Bully Review

Spam Bully
Email spam is probably the most annoying aspect of the Internet. Fortunately you don't have to suffer from the tens to hundreds of spam junk email messages most people get everyday. Spam Bully is a Bayesian junk mail filter for MS Outlook and Outlook Express, removing the annoying spam messages from your inbox. It is priced at a reasonable $29.99 and allows for a free 14 day trial.