Before we move on and discuss the featured Internet tools to stop big brother from snooping on you, let's first discuss a few things not to do, so to prevent anyone from collecting personal information about you. In the right hands, your personal information is as valuable as gold that can be bought and sold over and over again, but in the wrong hands your personal information can be used to assume your identity and trash your upstanding reputation.

On the Internet, there are hundreds of survey companies that offer to pay you or give you products, just for filling out their surveys. Don't do it, before carefully considering the tradeoff.

You will be asked to give your name, address, phone number, age, income, and much more before you even begin filling out the survey and this information is usually shared, traded or sold to marketing and advertising agencies or private individuals willing to pay for the information about you. This can and usually does lead to unwanted spam, potential scams and even late-evening dinnertime telemarketing sales calls to your home or cell phone. Plus, Big Brother (government agencies) can potentially demand information brokers to release any personal information about you with or without cause and without you knowing about it.

Here is your chance to start taking steps to stop the snoops wanting to spy on you. These useful Internet tools will not provide absolute protection from all snoops, but it will surely make their jobs much more difficult - the way that it sure be.

Hoax Busters

The Internet is chalk full of email hoaxes and Internet scams that are designed to steal your personal information, so to be used to make the scammers lots of money at your expense. Use this website to keep informed of the latest Internet hoaxes and scams, so that you can avoid becoming the next victim of identity theft.

Email Encryption

Each time any of us write and send an email over the Internet there is a real chance that someone other than the person that we intended to receive it has read our private communication. The standard email programs that most Internet Providers offer their users are not as fully protected from prying eyes as they could be. This website provides an excellent blog that teaches you how-to encrypt your email, so that most snoops are unable to read your private communications without your permission.

MintEmail

Never share your personal email address with anyone that you do not know or with any website that does not have a comprehensive privacy policy. It's just not worth sharing your personal email address, so that you can signup for a newsletter, social network or join some other Internet club. Use MintEmail to get a four-hour temporary email address and some other really cool features that you can use to join, use or receive information from the Internet. This type of email address is utterly worthless to information brokers and identity thieves.

Numbr.com

Sometimes we discover something that we really want to participate in on the Internet, but in order to signup, we are required to give our phone number. Unlike an email address, our phone number can be used to deliver telemarketing phone calls all times of the day or night, and even the worse part is that it can be used to identify where you live by using certain Internet tools. Numbr.com offers free disposable phone numbers that can be setup to expire whenever you need them to, but still receive real phone calls from those people that you are expecting to call and not expose your personal information over-the-Internet.

National Do Not Call Registry

Send a message to all telemarketers in the United States of America that you do not want to receive their telemarketing phone calls by having your phone number added to the National Do Not Call Registry.

Stop Cell Phone Spam

Put a stop to cell phone spam and unwanted cell phone text messages sent by marketing and advertising agencies wanting you to buy their products and services. This is an excellent blog from the Michigan Attorney General that explains in some detail how to go about eliminating the cell phone spam and take your privacy back.

Green Dimes

One of the easiest ways that identity thieves can use to collect personal information about their next potential victim is by stealing mail from the mailbox. We receive credit card offers, insurance discount offers and many other unwanted special offers through the mail and in the wrong hands this junk mail can be the beginning of one heck of a good time at your expense. Use GreenDimes to put a stop to junk mail by doing it yourself or by signing up for the premium service ($20.00) and have an experienced GreenDimes representative take care of the problem for you, if you do not have the time to do it yourself.

Catalog Choice

Help save the natural resources and the environment by simply putting a stop to unwanted paper catalogs that you no longer want to receive in your mailbox. Millions of trees can be saved and your privacy can be yours once again.

Avast!

 

Stop potential viruses and worms from activating and opening backdoors for hackers to snoop around and potentially steal your private personal information that you have stored away on your computer's harddrive. Avast! Is one of the best and easiest antivirus programs available on the Internet and it's 100% free for home users to use.

ZoneAlarm

The Internet would be much more secure if everyone using it would install a reliable firewall on his or her computer. Many times viruses and worms are spread from an effected computer to other computers that it comes in contact with and hackers can more easily gain access to an unprotected computer than they could if trying to access a computer with a firewall. Protect yourself and others that you come in contact with on the Worldwide Web by downloading and installing a firewall that will better protect your private information that you have stored on your computer and possibly prevent damaging viruses and worms from being planted on your computer's hard drive by a sneaky hacker.

 

What I really researched was a less cult-ish side to things. Science fiction is where people can imagine incredible things that have to do with technology and science. Since there are such things as science and technology in the real world, it's easy for science fiction and reality to overlap. For instance, there are automatic doors, cell phones and handheld computers like PDA's and Crackberries. You don't really think about it too much since these things are a part of your everyday life, but a while ago such things were unheard of. They were merely a staple of science fiction futuristic devices that people only dreamed of existing. I looked into how real-life things were inspired by literature rather than the other way around. Literature is usually influenced by real life.

Since I don't want to go any further and risk boring Mrs. X with everything that was in my essay (because I'm sure she had enough of it the first time around) I'm going to get right into what I really had planned.

I'm sure that everyone knows how the computer is really important in most sci-fis, right? You know, like it takes over the world or something? Well, today, there is something like that, and that's the internet and privacy. I don't want to sound like some crazy person who wears tinfoil to stop the satellites from scanning my brain but the internet and the world of technology can be a scary place. I feel that it would be a good idea to inform you about it a bit, since it has something to do with my project and of course, everyone in this room.
Okay, I'm assuming that everyone knows about the World Wide Web. I'm sure you've all used it before, and if you haven't, I can't help but wonder if you're kind of crazy. Anyway, the internet is an amazing thing, isn't it? It can do just about anything, and can connect you to people all over the world. Of course, you knew that though, right? You know about all of these highly popular social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace and all that. Can I get a show of hands for people who have a Facebook account?

There's a few of you, I guess then, eh? Well, I'm hoping that you read the fine print when you were joining. Okay, seriously, who does that? Well. You should know that you can never fully delete your account, right? It's true. There's still a little profile for people to check out even after you try to get rid of it. It's basically permanent. Everything on the internet is permanent, from e-mails to text messages to pictures, it's all stored in servers and caches all over the place, and you'll never get rid of it.

Back to the whole Facebook thing. I have a quote here, from the Privacy Policy on Facebook that you might find interesting if you haven't read it.

"We may use information about you that we collect from other sources, including but not limited to newspapers and Internet sources such as blogs, instant messaging services, Facebook Platform developers and other users of Facebook, to supplement your profile." (Facebook Privacy Policy)

Scary. So, what they're saying is that they'll just plaster everything they find about you on your page. Sure, you might say, "oh, well it saves me the trouble". But, have you considered that you might not want some of that stuff on there, or this company looking into your business?

So, what this means is that you have your own personal company to research you, yay, how exciting. Well, have you thought about who else could be looking you up? I know that you all want to get jobs in the future, go to college or university, all kinds of respectable things like that, right? Who wouldn't? You see, there's a catch nowadays though. A big catch. Since whatever you put on the internet stays there, anyone with enough time on their hands can find you. Yeah, so guess what those employers and recruiters are doing---yup, they're browsing whatever you've got posted all over Facebook and Myspace, Livejournal, Youtube, whatever they can find with a search engine.

Now, imagine you're an employer or recruiter for a school. You have a promising looking future student or employee. You decide that it's probably a good idea to look them up. Hell, they put their e-mail address right on that application, why not? So, you go to Facebook and typing in that e-mail, hit search and pop! There's a photo of that kid with a beer in their hand, drunk as a skunk. Pop! There's an angry blog they wrote about their last employer. Pop! Oh, a video of them doing something really stupid. Well, that application is going in the discard pile. You don't have time for someone like that.

Do you see how easy it is for them to do that? Crazy easy. I hope you're taking notes like "erase incriminating photos..."

Okay, you've seen it from the side of the employer/ recruiter person, so how about from your POV. Say you have a Facebook page. Okay, scratch that, I know most of you have one so let's take a real good look at this. You have a Facebook page. On it you have all kinds of fun stuff like what school you go to, your interests and so forth. Nothing to bad there. Well, say to add things like photos, which is real easy to do. And you think, "Ha, well, that was so funny, let's put that up for everyone else to see." Let's pretend this picture is of you and your friends. Oh how nice. That's a good one. It makes you look like a regular well adjusted person. That would be a positive thing to the whole Facebook thing with the employer / recruiter thing. Now, imagine that you or maybe even one of your friends puts up a picture of you passed out or something equally embarrassing. You probably don't think about how that could affect your future. Your popularity, maybe, but you don't consider much else. That seemingly harmless upload could cost you a good job or acceptance from a school.

Okay, that's enough with that for now. I'm going to talk about the stuff I read before I forget to, because that would be bad. Alright, I read Next, Dune, 1984, Brave New World and some random articles from magazines like national geographic. They were all science fiction or related to it, so that right there ties into my topic. Next dealt mostly with the issues surrounding the integrity of a person and the right to their body. I'm talking about some of the worst violations of privacy here, like people owning parts of your genome kind of violations. That was kind of scary in a way, because it was all set in basically our times, so yay paranoia.

Dune was a different sort of book. It was a mix of historical/fantasy/sci-fi. Really, it ties in better with my essay than the whole privacy issue, which was mostly in Next and the other books.

Brave New World, which I seem to have misplaced, dealt with cloning and things much like Next, only in twisted kind of world where social classes are really enforced and people are required to do exactly what they've been programmed to do.

1984 was a really good book too, and it kind of had all of the issues between its two covers. The most interesting part of it wasn't necessarily the whole dictatorship, though that was strange and fascinating all in itself. The most relevant part of the book was the complete and total lack of privacy like in Next. You have heard of "Big Brother"? BB? Yeah, well you could think of him as some creepy control freak that has to know everything that you're doing at all times. And, that leads me up to my next little bit.

This poster here, the "Big Brother is Watching Yo", it's you but it's been cut off, can be twisted to fit into my little presentation. You see, it's not necessarily Big Brother who is watching, per say it's the fact that Google can see you. I know, I know, I'm going into that whole paranoia thing again, but it's for a good cause. Alright. I want another show of hands or two, ready?

How many people have used Google? You can probably keep your hands up for the rest of them too if you've got your hand up now.

How many people have Googled themselves?

How many people have used Google maps?

Alright, cool. So you know about the most popular search engine in the interweb. Great. So, since you've all used it, you know how simple it is to just type in a couple words and find a place then, right? Yeah I thought so. Well, I had this whole thing planned out that I was going to 411 someone in this class with Google. I was going to have their address, phone numbers, list of who lives with them, directions to their house and a satellite map. Then, I realized that that was way creepy and didn't really want to do it. So, instead, I took a couple seconds and took a screenshot of this building here. The school, yes. And this arrow here, it's should say you are here. However, the ink died so there's just this big red arrow. Anyway, you get the idea, right? Here we are right here.

Now, the pictures taken from the satellites like this one, only bigger, are kind of old. For instance, I have a picture of my house where it doesn't have the new garage on it. So they are old enough pictures. It is a handy little tool on the internet too. However, I don't know about anyone else, but do you find it kind of strange that Google can just go and take pictures of everywhere on the planet, stick it all together and present it to the world? I think that's quite the advancement, and a good boredom buster.

It can be used for good things to, you, like, I'm sure George Bush probably used to try to find out where Osama is. But in all seriousness, this kind of information at the fingertips of basically anyone who has an internet connection and a pulse is somewhat disturbing. I'm not saying that you should go and rip your internet out and toss your computer out the window. I'm just suggesting that you look at things with a critical eye. I know that most people, myself included, like to imagine that everything is oh so fine. But the fact of the matter is that technology is just growing and shows no signs of stopping whatsoever. We have to keep up with it or it will leave us rather ignorant to how things really work.

Every time a person fills out a contest entry, sweepstakes form, survey application or joins an online community, then chances are the personal information that is used to complete these things are sold, rented or shared with second and third parties without our knowledge.

Most reputable companies or websites will have a privacy statement that explains clearly how they will use the personal information that they collect from their members or customers. Not all websites or companies are reputable, so it is extremely wise to read their privacy statements before handing over any revealing or personal information about you to strangers.

The following websites are extremely useful to help stop big brother from snooping into your personal business and private lives.

1. PGP

   PGP provides cryptographic privacy and authentication that is designed to protect email sent and received between two or more parties from being compromised by outside sources. This is an awesome email encryption program that really works great and is especially useful for sending and receiving important business email.

2. GuerrillaMail

   An excellent way to stop potentially a bunch of unwanted spam from clogging up your inbox is to use GuerrillaMail, so to get a disposable email address to use anytime your personal email address in required. The email expires in 15 minutes, just long enough to send or receive whatever is desired.

3. PookMail

   Stop sharing your real email address with every website that ask for it, but instead make up an imaginary email address using this website. Using this service for a while I have noticed a noticeable difference in the amount of spam that I have been receiving…considerably less. The email associated with your account is cleared every 24 hours allowing you to remain anonymous and still have fun.

4. Anonymous Speech

   Every time you send or receive a traditional email there are companies, governments and private individuals tracking your every move and storing these emails on both public and private servers. Anonymous Speech has an extremely secure email service that continues to provide outstanding email protection long after the email has been sent or received. This company does not share their client's personal information or email access with anyone and that does include government agencies and corporate entities. This program will not disappoint anyone who wants to remain anonymous when surfing the web.

5. Obviously

   This is an outstanding Do-It-Yourself website that shows you how to stop those pesky telemarketing phone calls and how to remove your personal information from marketing mailing lists, so to stop junk mail.

6. Double Click

   This company is the nerve center of digital marketing as the company self describes its self, but in reality, Double Click has probably collected some personal information about every person using the Internet at some point and time. They sell personal information collected to third parties for marketing purposes and the company will share the information that they collect on you with judicial or other government subpoenas, warrants or orders. Have your name and information removed from Double Click servers using the link above.

7. The Cloak

   Hide your web surfing activities from prying eyes and snoops while using this website to surf the net anonymously. The encrypted connection hides your identity from the sites that you are visiting using an http and https anonymous proxy. Your privacy is personal - get it.

8. BeHidden

   Here is another anonymous web surfing search engine that protects the surfer's person identity and web activities from being compromised by nosy webmasters, corporations, and governments. Also, BeHidden can be used to send anonymous email, so to further protect your identity. Awesome site!

9. Government Public Records Database

   Access the same databases as law enforcement and government officials do, so to request a copy of your FBI file. Yes it is true, the FBI compiles records concerning private citizens within the United States and you may be one of the people that the FBI has been watching. Excellent website tool for business operators, too.

10. Snarfed

    This is an outstanding blog about protecting your privacy when shopping on the Internet and what type of disposable credit or debit cards to use and how they work. Not all-disposable credit cards are made equally as some card programs will protect you better than others will. There is a lot of information here on this blog about privacy issues and there is a little something on here for everyone.

Remember, every time that you fill-out a contest or sweepstakes entry form or complete a survey your personal information is being collected and stored in some stranger's computer server somewhere. Each time a person joins another social network ( MySpace, Facebook ) or signs up to participate in an online forum; your personal information is being collected.

What or how these companies use your personal and private information depends on the company doing the collecting. Before doing business with or disclosing your personal information to, be sure to read the company's or website's privacy statement carefully, before disclosing anything to them. If the company or website does not have a privacy statement or the privacy statement looks suspicious, then avoid disclosing anything about you or anyone else to these types of companies and/or websites.