Web Surfing and online privacy and security are at odds with each other.

Imagine one day that you go into a store such as a grocery store, a department store, or book store and do some shopping. Then you're off to a place of business such as a law firm, a financial institution, or your doctor's office for a professional visit. And let's even include a stop at your local library where you check out some books.

Now imagine that upon your return home of taking care of your personal and private business, you find out that someone was behind you the entire time - taking notes! And that someone knew which stores you went into...knew what type of products you looked for and bought in the stores...knew what kind of legal issues you inquired about at the lawyer's office...knew what financial institutions you had accounts at...knew what ailments you were seeking medical treatment for...and knew which books you checked out at the library.

Now if someone did this for more than one day, they could quickly and easily compile quite a huge bank of information on you and could, quite possibly zero in on the exact details of who you are, where you live, where you work, where you shop, who you visit, and even your kid's name and where they go to to school - just to name a few details.

Now stop imagining and start realizing that it is true, real and happening right this minute! Your online privacy and security is zero as the example below shows.

In recent news it has come to light that some of the major internet search engines and internet service providers have divulged their visitor and customer internet behavior - even going beyond linking it to a person's computer IP address but attaching it to their User ID number as well.

As you can see, there is no online privacy and security for those users as you can quite easily learn a lot about their online habits in a short amount of time. Is that user you? Is your online life out there for all to see? And all of this is accomplished without placing even one byte of malware on your computer!

And this is just a sample of what recently made news. What about all the other online privacy and security breaches that were not made public? Now I don't believe AOL had any criminal intent when they made available their customer's private internet habits - but what about the those who do have criminal intent? What about those who want to do more than track your behavior in order to sell you something. What about others who want to side step your online privacy and security like the criminals who want to steal your identity, your money, your credit history, your good name? Or what if you just have a healthy desire for your personal privacy?

First: Check with your internet service provider to learn about their privacy policy. I know it sounds boring, but I bet AOL customers might have wanted to know ahead of time that their surfing and internet habits would be made publicly available to for all to see.

It used to be that the information connected to your internet account would only be made available in the event of a court order - now it appears that any marketer or curious Joe can download the goods. Imagine if your phone service provider kept a record of not only all the numbers you dialed, but also recorded every conversation made from your phone and then sold that information to anyone with a valid credit card - for any purpose: marketing or criminal. Well that's essentially what goes in the internet world.

Second: Browse the internet with anonymity. Get an anonymizer such as Tenebril's Ghost Surf or Anonymizer's Anonymous Surfing. There are free anonymizers but I must warn you that they are VERY slow - so slow you may just give up on the idea of privacy altogether (especially if you are used to broadband) - so don't let the free options get in the way of your birthright to privacy protection.

Not only are your web surfing habits channeled through secure servers (which hides your IP address), but the data your surfing transmits is encrypted as well. Anonymizers also can warn you about phishing and pharming sites. Anonymizers also offer protection for your wireless connections (for more on your home wireless connection security click here ). These anonymizers work with all browsers.

Third: If you do nothing else, at minimum try out the Ixquick.com search engine when looking up "sensitive" search terms - terms you wouldn't like to see displayed to the world. And by using it, you're not giving up your favorite search engine because Ixquick is actually a metasearch engine which means it pulls its results from the other top search engines. Try it.

-Don't put personally identifying information in your search terms - remember, they are stored and accessible by others.

-Don't use your Internet Service Provider's (ISP) search engine - because your ISP knows who you are and can link you to your search terms and the websites you visit.

-Don't login to your search engine or associated tools - your account gets tied in to your search terms and the websites you visit.

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