Free Republic

Here’s fair warning to all social media data scavengers, ad tracking companies, and analytics snoops on the InterWebs: There’s a new anti-tracking sheriff in town. Online privacy company Abine Inc. last week unveiled a new browser widget called, appropriately enough, DoNotTrackPlus (because these days everything has to come with a plus sign -- thank you, Google). I’ve been taking it for a spin this morning and I gotta say it’s pretty slick. DNT+ keeps more than 600 ad networks and other Web trackers from depositing tracking cookies on your hard drive. It also tells you who they are. Period, full...

Privacy rules don't apply to Internet messages, court says Federal agents do not need a search warrant to monitor a suspect's computer use and determine the e-mail addresses and Web pages the suspect is contacting, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. In a drug case from San Diego County, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco likened computer surveillance to the "pen register" devices that officers use to pinpoint the phone numbers a suspect dials, without listening to the phone calls themselves. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of pen registers in 1979, saying callers have...