What Are Tracking Cookies & How to Browse Privately Online
Dallas, Texas (PRWEB) July 28, 2013 -- idcloak Technologies publishes the first in a series of articles which explain important web privacy and security concepts in simple terms. The series is tailored for readers of a limited technical background.
What are tracking cookies? begins by briefly explaining what third-party cookies are, where they come from and what functions they perform for marketers. It highlights how data taken from the cookies is used by advertising syndicates to form behavioral profiles and target web-ads at the user.
“Accepting tracking cookies is rather like putting a sign up on your front door that tells salespeople what you are in to,” says idcloak’s Welles. “Understandably, some people don’t want that information in the hands of every business or government that will pay for it.”
The article leads on to a simple explanation of how users may refuse third-party cookies – by turning off third-party cookie permissions in their browser’s settings, “The problem is not how difficult it is to deactivate tracking cookies, it’s about knowing enough to want to do so.”
Asked about idcloak’s motivation to raise awareness on the issue of cookie-based tracking, Welles says it is a wider concern: “One mistake people tend to make is looking at privacy violations in isolated terms when the truth of the matter is that our data is regularly cross-referenced, repackaged, swapped, stolen and distributed.”
“The result is that more information about our inner lives ends up online than we would tell even our closest companions. This situation has occurred because our data has considerable value to various groups while we do very little to keep it from them. Behavioral tracking is just a small part of a much larger issue; one that our company is doing its best to address.”
idcloak is itself a developer of online anonymity services, but Welles insists that privacy protection cannot be limited to a single-edged solution. “In the same way data is collected from different sources, privacy protection also needs to be multi-faceted. We offer several means of how to hide IP address or encrypt an internet connection, but users need to be aware of the other ways they are freely exposing their data. They must close off those avenues as well.”
idcloak Technologies is a Dallas-based provider of proxy services, including the recently released Anon Proxy List – a live database of free servers that mask users’ identity and location when they connect to the internet. The company’s flagship service, an internet VPN, is billed for an early September 2013 release.
For more, see http://www.idcloak.com.
Gill-Chris Welles, idcloak Technologies Inc., http://www.idcloak.com, 786-210-9280, [email protected]
Share this article