Internet tips

On the Web, your life is an open book. Typing a name or telephone number into one of the many free online directories may disclose a person's age, previous cities of residence, and the names of close relatives.

If you're willing to pay a few dollars, you may be able to find the person's date of birth, current and past addresses, photos, videos, estimated annual income, the value of their residence, and social network profiles (although much of this information is available for free as well). Fee-based services also check public records for the person's criminal … Read more

Hard times seem to make people more vulnerable to ploys designed to separate them from their money and personal information. At least half of BBB Online's list of the Top 10 scams of 2010 occur in whole or in part over the Internet.

The best way to avoid being victimized by scammers is to be very careful about who you trust. Here are five ways to protect yourself from attacks on your bank accounts and private data.

Don't pay upfront One thing several recent scams have in common is a request by the scammer for you to pay … Read more

The Internet makes it so easy to share data that once a bit of information gets planted on a Web server, it's nearly impossible to remove all traces of it. The e-mail, photos, and other data we upload to Web sites will travel far and wide, whether we intend it to or not.

(The dark side of this sharing is shown by the recent Gawker security breach, as reported by CNET's Steven Musil. See below for links to more information on the Gawker data leak.)

When it comes time to remove an account, we can only hope the … Read more

The Federal Trade Commission recently announced its intention to promote the addition of a "do not track" mechanism in Web browsers. FTC Chairman Jon Lebowitz said the agency would offer "best practices" to browser makers, according to Declan McCullagh's Politics and Law blog, but wouldn't seek legislation mandating the feature, which likely made browser developers breathe easier.

With just a little effort, you can set Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Google Chrome to clear out and block the cookies most online ad networks and other Web trackers rely on to build their valuable … Read more

Web analysts have been predicting a boom in online advertising for almost as long as there has been a Web. After years of steady growth in online ads, the long-awaited boom could be just around the corner.

According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PwC US, U.S. online ad revenues increased 17 percent in the third quarter of 2010 over the same period of 2009, reaching $6.4 billion, the highest quarterly mark ever recorded.

While online video ads and more traditional banner and pop-up ads continue to generate increased revenue, the text ads that accompany search results … Read more

It sounds like a sweet deal: report your location to a social network and get a coupon for discounts and prizes. The price? The possibility that advertisers and other third parties will know where you are and where you've been.

A recent survey by the Pew Center's Internet & American Life Project found that only 4 percent of Internet users have adopted location-based services, as Cecilia Kang reports on The Washington Post's Post Tech blog. That survey was conducted in August and September, before Facebook and Yelp joined Foursquare and Gowalla in offering coupons to users who … Read more

Every wireless-network user should know the perils of signing into a Web service over an unencrypted connection. Elinor Mills explains the perils of using open Wi-Fi networks in her InSecurity Complex blog.

The safest approach is to enter user IDs and passwords only when the page's address begins with "https://" and it has a lock icon at the top or bottom of the browser window. Otherwise a network snoop could monitor your actions without your knowledge. Note that the lock icon may have an exclamation mark even though the page address begins with "https:". This … Read more

Some misguided souls in the Internet publishing world still consider all online material as being in the public domain. A recent example of this cluelessness is the editor of a food journal who stole an article that included a recipe for apple pie and then claimed to be doing the article's author a favor by reprinting it without the author's permission or any remuneration, as described by Helen A.S. Popkin on the MSNBC.com TechnoLog.

(See a related blog by CNET contributor Lance Whitney for more on the story.)

For the record, copyrights do indeed extend to … Read more

Someday Facebook won't be the No. 1 social network and No. 2 most popular Web site (numbers courtesy of Alexa's Top Sites list). But that day is probably a long way off. Here are 10 ways I'd like to see everybody's favorite social network improved. (For 10 ways to customize your Facebook status, see Amy-Mae Elliott's post on Mashable.)

1) Prioritize the feed. Facebook's Top News feed delivers the most popular updates from your friends. (The Facebook Blog explains how the Top News feed functions.) Unfortunately, there's no way to customize this feature … Read more