Someone (next to you) is watching you

Chances are that form time to time you browse the internet in a cafe using their (probably unsecured) wifi.

If so, there is a very real risk that you are being watched. Not in the sense that someone is standing behind you looking over your shoulder at your screen. Worse, as they are doing it without you knowing it:

They can connect to your machine and watch what you're doing on your screen from their screen.

If they know what they're doing they could even access your files and record your keyboard activity, ie work our your passwords.

I now use a tool called HotSpot Shield which is available free on PC, Max, iOS and Android.

Someone else is watching you

Actually they're stalking you. And whilst you might think this is your lucky day, actually this is not cool.

Imagine your stalker following you around wherever you go and making a note of where you are and exactly what you do when you get there. Then, if that's not enough, they take that information and sell it to other people so that they can understand your behaviour and then accost you on your way to your next destination.

Not cool, especially when this is also done by 'trustworthy' brands such as John Lewis. This graphic shows that JL made 4 tracking requests to my computer when I visited their web site.

Now imagine that it is a group of people stalking you all at the same time and they are all studying your behaviour and all selling your activities to others.

That is the reality, right now, every time you browse the internet.

Now I'm all for a personalised experience when visiting web sites and I understand that to do that they need to know about me and what I want, but doing it without asking and en masse is way uncool!

So, it's time to take back control. The only person that is going to protect your privacy online is you. Your web browser isn't going to do it and your ISP (the people that connect you to the internet) certainly isn't. So, it's time to get with the programme.

And thankfully there is a quite simple option open to you, and it's called Disconnect. This is an add-on to your browser that gives you quick and simple information about which websites are trying to track you and lets you anonymise your activity. It's quick and easy to use and let's you choose which stalkers you're happy to let into your life.

There are also other nice functions such as a creating a white list, secure search and stats around time and bandwidth saving. See the demo.

That's settled then

However, if you're not into your totalitarianism then you might want to vote on it.

And to vote on it you're best off using VoteIt.

You can set up ballots that are either public, where you share a link via social media, or are only accessible via an invite-only email.

VoteIt lets you set up consensus, multiple choice and yes/no polls, but you can also open up the choices by letting participants add their own options.

The freebie option lets you run 1 ballot at a time with up to 50 participants.

When you close the vote, VoteIt automatically sends a message to the participants with the final tally.

Encrypt Your Messages on Facebook and Gmail

Well actually you can use this on any site where you're leaving a message for someone. You can even use it on a text.

So what is it?

Well, once you've encrypted a message and posted it on Facebook (or somewhere else) whoever views that message will see a load of gobbledygook.

Unless they have the key to unencrypt your message.

Start by installing the Encipher It bookmarklet. After enabling it and choosing a key, you can encrypt any written text. Give your key to the person/people that you want to read your message and it's done. You can post your message in the knowledge that only those that have your key can read it.

Please stop with all the notifications

A simple solution for controlling the notifications you receive from social media sites is a tool called Notification Control.

It's essentially a really handy collection of bookmarks that gives you quick access to the email notification 'switches', allowing you to define from who and which notifications arrive in your inbox.