The most effective way to protect your privacy is with an “anonymizer.” This is a proxy server that you log into and the Internet sees it’s activity rather than yours:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AnonymizerLess costly and somewhat less effective user actions:
1. Disable “Autofill” on your browser also ensure the email address blank in the browser is empty. Most browsers associate an email address with it and when queried by a visited site, will supply your email address.
2. Do not save passwords in your browser. They can be harvested even though they are typically encrypted. Log into all internet site the old fashion way, by entering your ID and then your password.
3. In your browser’s settings, disable “Third Party” cookies. You can disable cookies entirely but site cookies are required by any site that requires a log in so it is able to remember you logged in and you’ll have to don’t have to keep logging in every time you change pages. Third party cookies are those from ad sites that display while you are reading the main site. For example news sites will fill a lot of the page with ads which come from an advertising server such as AOL. By blocking the third party cookies, the ad sites will have difficulty tracking your browsing. I’ve found some news sites will block access to their site unless you enable third party cookies.
4. Even more effect is to install an “Ad Blocker” plug-in for your browser. This is an application which blocks ad servers from accessing your computer - it is a very specialized “firewall.” Many information sites, particularly news sites, test for the presence of an ad blocker and will block further access to their site unless you disable the ad blocker.
5. Do not provide real information when filling out “Security Questions.” I use 3x5 cards for each account with the ID and the password and the security questions and their answers.
6. Use different IDs and passwords for banking and medical sites. Privacy advocates recommend using a different browser for those particularly sensitive applications of the internet.
7. Clear web history and cookies frequently from your browser, especially if you are doing searches for information you don’t want to become part of your advertising profile. Clear the history before the searches and again after the searches.
8. None of the above are fool proof but it will slow down the amount of junk mail.
9. But there is a down side to being private on the internet. Without an advertising profile, many travel sites will default to the highest fee structure for services offered. If you sit down beside a friend and request the same travel service from a travel site, it is not uncommon to get widely different fees, sometimes more that a hundred dollars based on your profile and credit history. So like your credit, it prudent to manage the information you allow to become part of the internet profile.
10. What most people understand is that the user ID is associated with the real person and most of the larger ad sites will associate the person with their publicly available information (any legal activity such as births, deaths, marriage, judgements, car titles, home address, home purchases and sales and credit information) which is provided by a “data aggregation” company. When I was working in law enforcement, I had temporary access to several of these “Data Aggregators” and found that they were reasonable accurate regarding financial information for myself and close family.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_aggregation11. The big thing in advertising is being able to predict when and what a user will buy:
https://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/advisor ... 57627.html