Personal Proxy - Online Privacy Protection for Home Users

Although online security has drawn increasing attention, online privacy issues have not been well addressed and communicated, especially for home users. Personal information collection is a common business practice for most web sites and this information can be collected without users' knowledge. There are few resources to educate home users effectively on how online privacy can be invaded and what they can do to protect against it. This paper describes certain online information collection methods and related privacy issues and introduces several personal proxy tools, particularly WebWasher in detail, to secure home users' online privacy. It concludes that better and comprehensive home computer security can be achieved when three types of critical security products: personal proxy, personal firewall and anti-virus, all work together.