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You are a fool, if:

1) You have a Facebook page under your own name, or with photos or *any* other personal information on it. (note: may be abbreviated to “You have a Facebook page.” This also applies to other social media, and *anything* to do with Google.

2) You put any other personal information on the Internet, other than minimal credit card information on secure sites. (Credit card security is now so awful that you should regularly, once a year, during a “quiet time”, request replacement cards with a new number.)

I highly recommend using the following sites:

PCTools Secure Password Generator. (Do not limit yourself to 8 character passwords, either. Go for a minimum of 21.)

http://www.pctools.com/guides/password/

Fake name and address generator.

http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/

10 Minute (renewable) functional email address.

http://10minutemail.com/10MinuteMail/index.html

Adobe Flash Cookies manager. Some sneaky websites (like Google), in addition to creating cookies that can be easily deleted from within your browser, also create “flash cookies”, that retain your information when your regular cookies have been deleted, and “reload” your browser cookies. Bookmark this site, as it lists and allows you to delete these flash cookies. Note: the control panel on the site is *not* an image, but a real control panel showing data from your computer.

http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager07.html

You have a Facebook page under your own name, or with photos or *any* other personal information on it. I have several social networking connections in my real name so if someone looks for it, they find it. It's purposefully vanilla with nothing interesting or too personal, but if someone wants to see my page, it's there. It's a passive honey pot of sorts.

The real info...that's elsewhere accessed only through a proxy (or two) and usually through https. It's certainly not hack proof, but any entity who takes the time to get through it won't be stopped anyway.

People overly boogieman data mining. It’s just data, that’s mostly available elsewhere anyway. All the efforts to “clean” your machine just inconvenience you, anybody really curious about your internet habits can still find them from you ISP, the various DNS, and the places you visit. Meanwhile most of the data mining is just trying not to send salsa ads to white people in Minnesota.