Safeguarding your Privacy on the Internet Often when people talk about privacy on the Internet they're concerned with the relatively unlikely threat of someone sniffing the bits of your transactions as they traverse the Net. You may be surprised to learn how much information about you can be gleaned from your Internet activities with no Net sniffing involved at all. Consider these facts: * Virtually all Web sites keep log information in order to track which of their documents are most often retrieved. These logs include the IP address of users, which in many cases can be tracked back to the identity of a specific individual. * There is no legal prohibition against sites posting specific information about you on the Web site itself. One Scandinavian site that proffers sexy photographs also published the IP address of "the ten horniest geeks on the Internet." * Because of shortcomings in identifying humans from their IP addresses, many sites are implementing other schemes for recording information about you. For instance, if a site asks you to follow a registration procedure prior to reading material--even freely-distributed material--then they may be tracking your reading patterns over time. * Generally speaking it is not illegal for a company to share information about your surfing habits with others. For instance, if you spend a lot of time browsing Internet shopping catalogs, it's conceivable that the hosts of those catalogs are sharing information about your preferences with others. * You may think of global discussion media as ephemeral--more like a cocktail party than a permanent record--but increasingly sophisticated indexes of Usenet and mailing lists make it possible to look up your postings from months or years ago. One service, DejaNews, will even give a profile of all of your postings! * The "cookie" scheme, introduced by Netscape and implemented in Microsoft's Internet Explorer, records your personal preference information on your hard disk. The purpose is to allow your preferences to endure across time. It's possible, though, for your preferences information to be used in ways you never intended. * Your Web browser may be willing to reveal a fair amount of information about you as you navigate Web sites: what operating system you run, what site you're coming from, even what Web page you visited prior to visiting their site. If you visit http://www.13x.com/cgi-bin/cdt/snoop.pl you'll see what they were able to discern just from your Web browser. * If you ever use a public computer terminal, beware of what the next user might be able to find out about you. They could examine the cache files on the PC, or they could look at the history of sites you visit. Try typing in the special URL of "about:global" the next time you use Netscape for a glimpse of what's recorded. What can you do to protect your privacy in light of all these facts? Unfortunately, there is no perfect answer, but there are steps you can take. * Be very discreet as to what information you give out about yourself. Don't indiscriminately fill out surveys asking all sorts of personal information. * Be especially careful what information you put on your Web page. For instance, think twice before publishing your plan to be away from home for a month starting September 1. * Think twice before posting to Usenet or a mailing list. Is this information I'd want a future employer to read? Is it something I wouldn't mind seeing in the local newspaper? Am I posting this message from the wrong account (e.g. posting from the employer's account on a topic that might relate to your work is a bad idea, unless your employer has a clear policy stating your right to free speech on all matters). * Look for log policies on Web sites you visit, and challenge those who don't tell you their policies to reveal them. * Consider downloading extra sensitive information from your home PC instead of a PC in a public area. * Keep up with what's going on in the privacy community. Support efforts of the Internet Privacy Coalition and others to encourage conventions and laws that protect your Internet privacy. Electronic Privacy Information Center: http://epic.org/ This organization is dedicated to preserving privacy in the electronic realm, including on the Internet. Their Web site includes both original materials and pointers to other sites. The Electronic Frontier Foundation site: http://www.eff.org/ The Internet Privacy Coalition site, including an explanation of their Gold Key logo program: http://www.privacy.org/ipc/ A statement from DejaNews' user liaison about privacy and their service: http://icg.harvard.edu/~cscie10/law/dejanews.html A nice overview of the "cookie" standard: http://www.illuminatus.com/cookie Investment planing with the net A great place to start our tour is with Yahoo! Quotes at http://quote.yahoo.com/. You can enter one or more stock symbols into its simple interface, and you'll immediately see those stocks' last trade cost, change, and volume as well as recent news about the company. (Once you do this, you can set the page as a Favorite Place for easy access, or even as your Web browser's home page, to get the info every time you start using the Web.) Yahoo! Quotes also offers the latest stock news, info about new stock offerings and more.I am anything but a stock genius. I own a few shares, but I probably buy them for all the wrong reasons. (I mean, I bought stock in Atari because I wanted an Atari computer in 1982. I bought shares of a publisher just because I like reading one of their magazines.) That's why I'm pretty fond of StockMaster at http://www.stockmaster.com/. StockMaster will tell you the current trading price and all the typical details about a stock, but it also provides instant graphs of the stock's activity: you can track the stock's rise and fall over the past year at a glance, and compare its price to the average of the S&P 500. There's also an "investor sentiment survey" where you can answer the question "How positive/negative are you for the prospects for this stock in the next three months?" and see a graph of other's views, too.InvestorsEdge, at http://www.investorsedge.com/, offers mutual fund information, stock and company news, and a personal portfolio you can use to track your investments. What's a mutual fund? Geez, I don't know. That is, I didn't--until I visited the Mutual Fund Investor's Center at http://www.mfea.com/. Its "education" section spells out the basics of mutual fund investing, how to read a prospectus, and more. It's a bit commercial and pitchy, but offers good info.Money Talks (http://www.talks.com) is an especially useful site for investors. Money Talks is a collection of investment columns geared toward individual investors interested in mutual funds, personal finance, the equities marketplace, the utilities and power industry, and the retail industry. Money Talks features five columns, one of which is updated each weekday. Live chat sessions featuring investment pundits are also planned here.CNN Financial Network (http://cnnfn.com/) offers hot stories, market news, your money (covering all facets of personal finance and individual investing), digital jam (highlights stories on high-tech companies, and tech stocks,) and much more. It's loaded with information, although you'll have to explore to find where all the good stuff is buried.PR Newswire (at http://www.prnewswire.com/) is a clearinghouse for press releases. The main staple of the PR Newswire site is Company News On Call (http://www.prnewswire.com/cnoc.html) which houses the full text of press releases from almost 700 public and private companies. If you can get past the sometimes saccharine flavor that is all too common to company self-promotion ("our company just lost $1 billion and our president just died of cholera, but things are looking rosy!") you can learn a myriad of details about a company from their press releases. It can take some careful reading between the lines to get the true gist of a press release, but since most companies are eager to publish one any time anything vaguely interesting happens, press releases can be a good indicator of how a company is faring -- or at least, an indicator of the company's opinion of itself.Parent Soup's guide to saving, investing & giving, at: http://www.parentsoup.com/library/mon004.html. There is so much information here that you'll want to add it to your favorite places list for future reference. This site is produced by the folks at Parent Soup (a fantastic site covering all aspects of being a parent). The topics covered range from how to decipher analyst and annual reports, to helping you determine whether or not full service brokers are for you. You can also get information on charities, what are discount brokers, introduction to investment, advice on determining whether or not to invest in a particular company -- there is even advice on how to plan for your child's college education (imagine that, at Parent Soup ). And a whole LOT more. The site is very well organized, very easy to navigate, and the content at is well worth your time in your quest to gain financial/investment knowledge. At the American Express Financial Advisors page, you'll be able to use their Interactive Financial Tools. (http://www.americanexpress.com/advisors/). The Interactive Financial Tools are a free service of American Express. These tools will help you understand why financial planning is critical to your financial success. They will also help you answer the three simple questions: Where am I now? Where am I going? How will I get there? The seven steps you need to complete are: determining your net worth, calculate your cash flow, calculate your "real" take home pay, project retirement, save for college, determine financial needs of a survivor, and explore investment models. This site makes it very easy to complete these steps and you always know just where you are in the process. As a note, American Express does not save any of the financial information that you supply in order to obtain your personal financial profile...so be sure to have paper in your printer!At he Wall Street Directory, Inc. (http://www.wsdinc.com/index.html), you will find tools for the computerized trader and investor with over 6500 pages of information -- searchable via 100 categories, listing thousands of company, product, and service descriptions. And, boy howdy, they aren't kidding. From information on advisory services, to agricultural services, asset allocation and currencies-exchange rates....all the way to retirement planning. This site seems to have it all. Here you can also get the WSD quick notes that contain information on stock/mutual fund quotes and news/company reports. There is also a newsletter for special offers and announcements that you can subscribe to along with an e-mail forum showing the two-way correspondence from members.INVESTMENT-TALK is an open, unmoderated discussion list featuring investments in commodities, bonds, equities (stocks), forex, funds, and futures mainly for the US markets, but not limited to! Anyone interested in investments, be it private or business oriented is welcome to join. Banks, brokers, investment & research houses are welcome to join and support the list with their comments, tips, hints and research. To subscribe, send email to: MAJORDOMO@MISSION-A.COM In the body of the message type: subscribe Investment-Talk (Site description courtesy of InterNIC Net Scout, Computer Sciences Department, University of Wisconsin - Madison.)Investor's Business Daily, the Los Angeles-based "newspaper for important decision makers," makes most of the story content of its daily paper is available at this site, in such categories as "Front Page," "Executive Update,""Computers & Tech, "The New America," "The Economy," and "The Markets." In addition, volume tables are provided for NYSE, NASDAQ, and AMEX which "list active issues by comparing yesterday's trading volume to the stock's trailing 50 days average trading volume." A searchable archive is available. For serious investors, this is a serious site. Investor's Business Daily http://www.investors.com/ Today's IBD: http://www.investors.com/web_edition/today/welcome.html (Site description courtesy of InterNIC Net Scout, Computer Sciences Department, University of Wisconsin - Madison.)The moderated newsgroup misc.invest.financial-plan is intended to provide for well-tempered discussions, including, but not limited to, the following topics: financial planning, taxation, saving and investing, insurance planning, retirement planning, and estate planning. General discussion concerning the different types of investments would be welcome; however, recommendations of specific stocks or investments are not allowed. Note that the moderator will not permit posts offering professional or other advice, services or products for remuneration. (Site description courtesy of InterNIC Net Scout, Computer Sciences Department, University of Wisconsin - Madison.)StreetEYE (http://www.streeteye.com/) attempts to bring together every important investment and financial resource on the Internet into a neatly arranged structure, organized by topic and subtopic, and supplemented by a search engine. The frames-based main page provides a consistent, easily navigated front end for browsing resources. An alternate main page presents the same information in tabular form for those without frame capability. The news and quotes & graphs pages provide links to sites offering both up-to-the-minute and archival data. The exchanges page lists many of the world's financial markets, with links to details about brokers, banks, investment managers, and other market participants. Users will also find information about government and commercial information providers, non-profit institutions, and other financial resources. Individual investors can browse a collection of personal finance topics, as well as selected non-financial resources. The entries in each listing are arranged by topic, but are not annotated with information about what the user will find at individual sites. Even if you're already using the Internet to gather investment information, this site will help you to keep up with current offerings. (Site description courtesy of InterNIC Net Scout, Computer Sciences Department, University of Wisconsin - Madison.)The Wall Street Research Net Web page (http://www.wsrn.com/) is available with over 140,000 links to help professional and private investors locate economic data and perform fundamental research on actively traded companies. The Company Information section of WSRN has entries for 5,414 companies. Currently, there are links to such items as SEC documents, company home pages, annual reports, press releases and other investor information, and stock price information from MIT. The Economic Research section contains links to economic databases around the globe such as the U.S. Department of Commerce and the better university sites. The Research section contains links to independent providers of research to the investment community. (Site description courtesy of InterNIC Net Scout, Computer Sciences Department, University of Wisconsin - Madison.)