Using Privacy Features

On the Internet, information moves back and forth across public lines and through numerous connections. Without adequate protection, the privacy of personal information stored on your computer or transmitted over the Internet can be compromised in a variety of ways.

Fortunately, your browser includes features you can use to safeguard the privacy and security of your personal information at all times. The sections that follow describe how Netscape helps you control cookies, passwords, forms, and images while you are surfing the Internet.

Many web sites publish their privacy policies according to the Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) standard. For information on how to take advantage of this emerging privacy standard, see Setting Privacy Levels.

For information about related Netscape security features, see Signing & Encrypting Messages and Using Certificates.

For general information about privacy and security, including descriptions of viruses, safe online shopping and banking, and safe surfing for children, see the online document Understanding Security.

Privacy Topics:

Privacy on the Internet

Using the Cookie Manager

Using the Password Manager

Using the Form Manager

Encrypting Stored Sensitive Information

Managing Images

Privacy & Security Preferences

 


Privacy on the Internet

This section summarizes some background information about privacy on the Internet. It also describes several things you can do to safeguard your own privacy.

For a more detailed discussion of privacy issues, see Understanding Privacy.

In this section:

How Does a Web Site Gather Information About Me?

What Information Does My Browser Give to a Web Site?

What Are Cookies, and How Do They Work?

How Do I Make Sure Unauthorized People Don't Use Information About Me?

How Can I Browse Anonymously?

 

How Does a Web Site Gather Information About Me?

There are two ways that a site can obtain information about you:

There are two ways for sites to store information about you:

A web page can't find out your email address, name, or any other personal information unless you explicitly provide it. You are in control—no one can obtain personal information about you unless you allow it.

 

What Information Does My Browser Give to a Web Site?

When your browser displays a web page—for example, each time you click a link or type a URL—a small amount of information is given to the site. This information includes your operating environment, your Internet address (not your email address), and the page you're coming from.

Operating Environment

The site is told something about your operating environment, such as your browser type and operating system. This helps the site present the page in the best way for your screen. For example, the site might learn that you use the French version of Netscape 6.2.3 on a Windows 2000 computer.

Internet Address

Your browser must tell the site your Internet address (also known as the Internet Protocol, or IP address) so the site knows where to send the page you are requesting. The site can't present the page you want to see unless it knows your IP address.

Your IP address can be either temporary or fixed (static).

If you connect to the Internet through a standard modem that's attached to your phone line, then your Internet service provider (ISP) assigns you a temporary IP address each time you log on. You use the temporary IP address for the duration of your Internet session. Each ISP has many IP addresses, and they assign the addresses at random to users. A web site can tell which ISP a temporary IP address comes from, but it can't learn anything about you personally from your temporary IP address.

Important: Your IP address is not your email address. Your email address uniquely identifies you in cyberspace just as your social security number identifies you in the real world. A temporary IP address is no more a part of your identity than the phone number of a pay telephone you use to make a call.

If you have DSL, a cable modem, or a fiber-optic connection, you may have a fixed IP address that you use every time you connect.

Whether your IP address is temporary or fixed, you might not want that information to be given to a site you intend to visit. To block your IP address from being given out, see How Can I Browse Anonymously?.

Referring Page

The site is also told which page you were reading when you clicked a link to see one of the site's pages. This allows the site to know which site referred you. Or, as you traverse the site, it allows the site to know which of its pages you came from.

 

What Are Cookies, and How Do They Work?

A cookie is a small bit of information used by some web sites. When you visit the site that uses cookies, the site might ask your browser to place one or more cookies on your hard disk.

Later, when you return to the site, your browser sends back the cookies that belong to the site.

By default, this activity is invisible to you, and you won't know when a site is setting a cookie or when your browser is sending a web site's cookie back. However, you can set your preferences so that you will be asked before a cookie is set.

Why Permit Cookies?

There are times when it would be to your advantage to allow a site to know something about your previous visits. For example, if you were previously filling out a long form and got as far as page 17, it would be nice if the site could take you immediately to page 17 on your next visit.

Why Reject Cookies?

If a site can store a cookie, it can keep track of everything you've done while visiting the site by writing these things into a cookie that it keeps updating. In this way, a site can build a profile on you.

This may be a good thing or a bad thing depending on what the site does with the information. For example, it might be good if a bookseller knew you frequently looked for information on dogs so it could tell you about a new dog book. It might be bad if the bookseller then sold that information to the local dog pound so they could cross-check for potential dog owners who do not have valid dog licenses.

How Do Sites Use Cookie Information?

Web sites can use cookie information to tailor their presentations to you, and advertisers can use such information to target online ads to your interests and buying information. Reputable web sites have privacy policies that describe how they use the information they receive.

When in doubt, check a web site's privacy policy before permitting a cookie to be set and before providing any personal information (such as your name and email address). To learn how to do this, see Viewing Privacy Policies. For information on how to manage cookies with the aid of published privacy policies, see Setting Privacy Levels.

What Are Foreign Cookies

If your browser stores a site's cookie, it will return the cookie only to that particular site. Your browser will not provide one site with cookies set by another. Since a web site can only receive its own cookies, it can keep track of your activities while you are at that site but not your activities in general while surfing the Web.

But suppose that while you visit site example.com, a cookie gets stored not by example.com but by a different site called example.net. example.com can cause that to happen very simply by displaying an image from example.net. So when you visit example.com your browser makes a side-trip to example.net to get the image, and example.net stores the cookie at that time.

If example.net enlists many sites to display its cookie-storing image, it can build up a cookie that contains information about your behavior at all those sites. The more sites that display example.net's image, the more encompassing a profile it can build on you.

Such cookies that are stored by the site other than the one that you think you are visiting are called foreign cookies. If you are concerned about foreign cookies but not about ordinary cookies, you could give permission for sites to store ordinary cookies only but not foreign ones.

You use the Cookie Manager to specify what types of cookies you want your browser to accept.

 

How Can I Make Sure Unauthorized People Don't Use Information About Me?

The best way to keep your information private is to be cautious about providing it to others. The Internet is a public network. When you send your name, phone number, address, and other personal information over the network (via a web page, email, or any other method), that information may become available to others unless both you and the receipient take precautions and agree how it will be used.

Providing your name, address, and phone number on the web is like having a listing in the telephone book. In fact, if you are listed in the white pages of the telephone book, your name, address, and phone number are probably listed in online directories and other databases on the World Wide Web. (Try looking yourself up in a directory such as People Finder or Yellow Pages.)

If a web site asks for information about you, always check the site's privacy policy before proceeding. Here are some questions you might ask about a web site's privacy policy:

 

How Can I Browse Anonymously?

When you request to see a page from a site, your browser must tell the site your Internet address (IP address) so the site knows where to send the page. Your IP address can be either temporary or fixed (static).

Whether your IP address is temporary or fixed, you might not want that information to be given to a site you intend to visit. But if your browser doesn't provide this information, the site won't know where to deliver the requested page. So this is the one piece of information that you can't ask your browser not to reveal.

If you really want to hide your IP address from the site, you need to use some trusted intermediate site. You go to the intermediate site and tell it the name of the site whose page you want. The intermediate site requests the page on your behalf, using its own IP address as the return address. Then, when it gets the page, it forwards it on to you. The site that supplied the page never sees your IP address.

Several sites exist that provide such services. Use your favorite search engine to find them---try search words such as "anonymous browsing".

Return to beginning of section ]


21 May 2002


Copyright © 1998-2002 Netscape Communications Corporation.