Privacy features let you erase your tracks online

Newsday (MCT) - Enough about "porn mode" in Internet Explorer 8.0.

The new privacy features previewed in the recent beta 2 are a good idea.

The problem that Microsoft is addressing _ and in a serious fashion _ is mysterious to less-sophisticated computer users: In the name of convenience, computers track stuff that, if found by someone, could embarrass you, bust you dead broke, or get you fired. Forget about porn. Give me about five minutes with a PC you've been using, and I can tell most of what you've been doing on the Internet, including details of your banking transactions if you're careless.

Meanwhile, on the Internet end of things, computers routinely track your activity to create custom advertising, commissions and marketing information.

Internet Explorer's 8's "InPrivate" option lets you turn off data collection for specific sites, then turn it back on again. Among the data you can manipulate are:

_ Your browsing history and address bar.

_ The disk cache, designed to speed up surfing, also records hundreds of megabytes of Web pages you've accessed.

_ Cookies, usually with no bad intent, but which do contain site-specific names that can be read locally.

_ File download history.

_ Saved form information where passwords and other site-specific data may lurk.

_ Sending of referrer headers. If you visit site A, site B can read this to tell who sent you; this is the basis of "click through" advertising referrals.

The idea is that you freeze data collection on sensitive sites. True, people who view porn sites will find this wildly useful to keep casual snoops from noticing, although most likely such sites will refuse to let people log in if they have privacy enabled. But it is also useful for anyone who occasionally indulges private surfing at work, contrary to company policy, who uses Internet cafes or has to borrow someone else's PC.

Porn mode is a big improvement over the common method for dealing with the issue, which is to blow away all the collected data (in Internet Explorer 7.0 go to tools/general and click on the "delete" button under Browsing History. You'll then get a new window that lets you kill off data categories individually, or all at once.), at which point you, unfortunately, also delete any site-specific preferences you've saved, as well as Web sites you may have forgotten to bookmark. There are also many aftermarket programs for this kind of operation. I use Steven Gould's Cleanup! (stevengould.org), which is free.

As is often the case, Microsoft is popularizing a feature that has its roots elsewhere. Back in 2005, Apple introduced a private mode in its Safari browser that selectively blocked data collection on the Mac. Assuming you want a finished product rather than beta, Safari for Windows, which came out in 2007, also incorporates this feature. Since Safari has such a small market share, this isn't going to do you much good when you borrow or rent a computer.

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What about Mozilla Firefox? The Mozilla folks are promising a response, but it is interesting that porn mode, unlike most of IE's other new features, didn't appear on Firefox first. Privacy has always had an ambiguous relationship to the anarcho-libertarian ethos of the Internet that Firefox exemplifies. In this case, privacy controls threaten a business model the Net discovered before Microsoft: The click-through. Go to site A, click on an ad, then go to site B to buy it. The click-through generates a commission to site A. Variations, including advertising tailored to the user, are one of the underpinnings of Internet commerce.

While Firefox has no official porn mode as yet, third parties' add-ons may fill the gap. Stealther (addons.mozilla.org), gets mixed reviews from users with the latest version of Firefox, 3.1. It worked as advertised for me with version 3.0, allowing me to maintain my history list while selectively turning off some sites. It did occasionally block a site altogether, and some individuals say it deletes entire histories. Also check out Distrust (addons.mozilla.org). Distrust takes a slightly different approach. Where Stealther never allows data collection in the first place, Distrust monitors everything that happens after you begin a browsing session, then deletes it when the session ends.

To bury your tracks even deeper, another option is XB Browser, a dedicated, fully stealthed browser based on Firefox. Besides clearing out data, it also uses an anonymous network that hides your PC's address and encrypts all traffic so that it can't be read, for example, by your ISP. The free Tor network (torproject.org) is usable but painfully slow at times on my PC, and I've not tried the for-fee XeroBank network. The XB browser is also portable, meaning you can install it on a USB drive and carry it from computer to computer. Still, if you're worried about police state tactics, TOR can and does regularly bypass the Great Firewall of China to show the country's residents sites blocked by the government.

The latest entry in the porn mode sweepstakes is Google's browser beta, dubbed Chrome, which debuted this month. I'm waiting to download it, and will give a full report in an upcoming column.

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(Lou Dolinar writes a technology column for Newsday and hosts Lou's Day, "designed to help normal people unsnarl their computers," at www.dolinar.com. He can be reached at lou@dolinar.com.)

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