In addition to listing your browsing history the app also organizes visited sites into categories showing how someone can easily group gathered data to find out more about you and what you do online.

If you want to prevent this type of intrusions and unauthorized data mining you should disable the browser history and CSS styling, more details available here. For other ways to secure your browser I highly recommend you to check out browser addons for Security and Privacy (Firefox users only).

Check out WhatTheInternetKnowsAboutYou @ www.whattheinternetknowsaboutyou.com

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• Ghostery: Know How Web Pages Are Monitoring You
• Add-Art: Replace Ads With Art Images
• Yauba: Anonymous Search Engine
• WidExplorer: Navigate Multiple Websites Simultaneously
• WhoCallsMe: Identify Unknown Callers

Features

• Fast and reliable with over 4 Gigabits of dedicated bandwidth.
• Total Privacy assured. They would keep no records of your surfing.
• No need to download any software.
• 128 Bit Secure Connection to ensure privacy over all networks.
• Free to register.

If you liked this tool you may also check MakeUseOf article on 10 Ways To Speed Up Torrent Downloads. Lots of readers foundthe post really useful.

Check out ItsHidden @ www.itshidden.com [via Torrentfreak] (by Abhijeet from Jeet Blog)

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• Yauba: Anonymous Search Engine
• TemporaryInbox: Temporary Email Forwarding
• ShowRSS: Get BitTorrent RSS Feeds For TV Shows
• Qtorrents: Search Multiple Torrent Sites
• NowTorrents : Real-time Torrent Search

Vanish is available as a software plus Firefox plugin system and as a web based app. It works with almost all the messaging systems like email, chats, social networks like Facebook etc. The messages are encrypted with a key which is lost after 8 hours and hence the message can’t be decrypted.

Fro more info watch demo video below:

Get the Vanish System here and click here to access the web based version. (via ReadWriteWeb) (by Abhijeet from Jeet Blog )

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• TemporaryInbox: Temporary Email Forwarding
• sPaste : Securely Send Text Online
• MakeMeTheKing: Free Temporary Anonymous Email Boxes
• DestructingMessage: Send Emails that Self-Destruct
• Akapost: Keep your Email Private and Prevent Spam

So if you received a strange phone call, enter the phone number into the field and click “Get Details”. If this number was reported before, you can read related user comments and share your own experience. If the number was not reported, leave your comments online so that others can benefit from this information.

Features:

• Identify strange callers online by looking up the phone number.
• Search user reports and read comments from those who received calls from the same number.
• Report strange phone numbers.
• Similar websites: NumberZoom and EveryCall.us

Check out WhoCallsMe @ www.whocallsme.com

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• MakeUseOf 'Geeky Fun' - Hillarious Geeky Pics and Videos from different parts of web.

• PhoneSpamFilter: Stop Telemarketing Phone Calls
• NumberZoom: Trace Unknown Caller IDs and Telemarketers
• EveryCall.us: Easily Trace Calls From Unknown Numbers
• TrapCall: Lets You View Blocked Caller ID
• TemporaryInbox: Temporary Email Forwarding

TOSBack is an online tool that monitors changes in TOS pages on popular Internet websites and lets you easily view and compare recent policy changes and updates. Currently it is tracking 44 websites including Facebook, Craigslist, Amazon etc., with new ones added daily. You can track changes by visiting the website or subscribing to updates by RSS feed.

Features:

• Monitor changes in terms of service agreements of popular internet services.
• Currently the site tracks TOS pages of 44 popular social networks, online retailers, search engines etc.
• Track changes by visiting the site or subscribe to updates via RSS feed.

Check out TOSBack @ www.tosback.org

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• ZooToo: Social Networking For Pet Owners
• Yauba: Anonymous Search Engine
• WorldSings: Discover New Artists & Rate Indie Songs
• WIKAY: See How Any Website Can Access Your Browsing History
• WhoCallsMe: Identify Unknown Callers

Once you have signed in, you can include personal information about yourself including photos, short bio, interests, links to your social profiles and other info and offer people a way to contact you without revealing your real email address. You can publish your contact info (phone numbers, emails, addresses) and specify the list of people who can view it.

Features:

• Find yourself on Google and control what information people see when they search for you on Google.
• Include personal info about yourself (photos, short bio, links to social profiles etc).
• Publish and update your contact details and specify the list of people who can view it.
• Receive messages without revealing your email address.
• To create and customize your Google profile, sign in with your Google Account credentials.

Check out Google Profiles @ www.google.com/profiles

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• Zooity: Aggregate Your Social Media Profiles
• Yauba: Anonymous Search Engine
• Yahoo! Media Player: Embedable MP3 Player
• Wolfram Alpha Google: Adds Wolfram Alpha Search Results Next To Google’s
• WikiWorldBook: Free Online Address Book

The installation process is usual and there is no registration.

Ghostery currently can detect over 135 major services that track you on the web. Some of these services are: Google Analytics, MyBlogLog, Quantcast, IndexTools, SiteMeter, Lijit, Omniture, CrazyEgg, Snap… etc.

Features:

• Find out what web pages are watching you.
• Can detect over 135 major services that track you on the web.

Check out Ghostery @ www.ghostery.com

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• WIKAY: See How Any Website Can Access Your Browsing History
• PrivacyChoice: Opt Out Cookies That Track Your Browsing
• Prime Proxies: Find Proxy Servers That Actually Work
• OnlineLinkScan: Scans Suspicious Links For Viruses
• EncryptIt: Encrypt Text Online

Using it you can search the whole Internet or search only mainstream news, images, PDF files, social networks, videos and more. Refine results by keywords or by domain. Click on results to visit external sites directly or click the green “Visit anonymously” link to browse them anonymously through Yauba’s proxy servers.

Features:

• Provides you with anonymous searching.
• No user records are stored on the servers, all information is deleted.
• Search the whole Internet or search only blogs, images, PDF files, social networks etc.
• Visit external sites anonymously through Yauba’s proxy servers.
• Similar tools: CTunnel and Prime Proxies.

Check out Yauba @ www.yauba.com (via Orangelinks)

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• TemporaryInbox: Temporary Email Forwarding
• MakeMeTheKing: Free Temporary Anonymous Email Boxes
• ItsHidden: Use Bittorrent Anonymously
• ZabaSearch: Search People by Name, Address & Phone Number
• Yahoo Glue: All Search Results On One Page

TemporaryInbox offers two ways to protect your email from spam. First, it gives you temporary inbox email accounts that can be used for suspicious sites ande delted at any time. Additionally, there are temporary forwarding accounts that merely redirect incoming email to your real address.

1) Temporary inbox for incoming mail

You can get a temporary email address right from the main page (see picture below). It works the same way as any usual email address and can be used anywhere. The only difference is that all incoming emails to this address are deleted automatically after 6 hours. To check for incoming mails just enter your temporary address into provided field and click “Go”. There is also a Firefox browser add-on that lets you check your temporary inbox right from the browser toolbar.

2) Temporary forwarding

Forwarding account lets you create an email that forwards all of your incoming emails to your real email address. This account can be easily deleted at any time.

Features:

• Protect your private email from spam by using disposable email accounts
• 2 types of accounts available: temporary inbox email and temporary forwarding.
• Download the Firefox browser plugin to access temporary inbox right from the browser toolbar.
• No registration needed.
• Similar websites: MakeMeTheKing, MeltMail and TempInBox.

Check out TemporaryInbox @ www.temporaryinbox.com

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• MakeMeTheKing: Free Temporary Anonymous Email Boxes
• Dodgit: Instant Disposable Inbox
• TempInBox: Temporary Email Account
• StopForwarding: Ask Friends to Stop Spamming your Email
• SpamGourmet : Spam Blocker for your eMail

How it works:

1. Sign up with the service
2. Key in provided numbers in your cellphone
3. When you a receive a call from a blocked number, just reject it.
4. The number is sent to the company server, unmasked and sent back to your voicemail.

Features:

• Reveal blocked phone number of the caller.
• No need to download additional software or hardware.
• Use basic service free or sign up for paid plans for additional features.
• Works with all cellphones, supported by AT&T and T-Mobile. Other carriers to follow.
• Currently available only in the US

Check out TrapCall @ www.trapcall.com

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• WhoCallsMe: Identify Unknown Callers
• TemporaryInbox: Temporary Email Forwarding
• PhoneSpamFilter: Stop Telemarketing Phone Calls
• NumberZoom: Trace Unknown Caller IDs and Telemarketers
• GreenDimes: Reduce Postal JunkMail & Stay Green

The process of installation is usual, just download add-on on to your browser, subscribe to one of user updated filter lists, and then restart Firefox. That’s it, from that moment you will only see cool arty images.

The images changed once in two weeks, if you do not like particular set of images on Add-Art you can easily disable it. The ads will be still blocked.

For more info watch demo video below:

You might also want to see our related article “How To Block Annoying Ads in Firefox”

Visit Add-Art @ www.add-art.org

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• WIKAY: See How Any Website Can Access Your Browsing History
• ShortcutWorld: Keyboard Shortcut List For Essential Apps
• PrivacyChoice: Opt Out Cookies That Track Your Browsing
• Pluribo: Summarize Gadget and Electronics Reviews on Amazon
• KwiClick: Add Google Search and More to Right Click Menu

To create your temorary email account all you have to do is to send email to an anything@makemetheking.com email address of your choice, and the anything here can be anything at all. You don’t need to create any account, no logins, nothing at all. Just send an email to that email address and you are done.

Next up, go to MakeMeTheKing.com and check your inbox.

And you will find your emails. You can also subscribe to RSS feeds for your inbox to stay updated about your incoming mails.

Features:

• Anonymous and Temporary email addresses
• No sign ups, No accounts required.
• Anonymous mailboxes can be created on the fly.
• Subscribe to Feeds for your anonymous mailbox and be notified of incoming mails.
• Completely free service.
• Also get temporary email with Yopmail, Mintemail, FilzMail, 10MinuteMail and Gishpuppy.

Check Out @ MakeMeTheKing.com (Contributed by Kinshuk Sunil from kinshuksunil.com)

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• TemporaryInbox: Temporary Email Forwarding
• Dodgit: Instant Disposable Inbox
• DestructingMessage: Send Emails that Self-Destruct
• Yauba: Anonymous Search Engine
• Vanish: Protect Sensitive Data with Self-destructing Messages

I particularly like the feature which converts email address to an image. It looks pretty neat and if you have a blog, you can use it to display your contact information and at the same time prevent the spam bots from copying it. Much better than writing your email address in ‘abc at gmail dot com’ format.

Also see SpamProofEmailGenerator a similar tool that  we have profiled earlier .

Check out Hidetext @ www.hidetext.net (Contributed by Abhijeet from Jeet Blog)

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• Yauba: Anonymous Search Engine
• WIKAY: See How Any Website Can Access Your Browsing History
• WhoCallsMe: Identify Unknown Callers
• Web2.0Write: Converts Text To Image Using Popular Web Icons
• Vanish: Protect Sensitive Data with Self-destructing Messages

It can be quite helpful for getting additional information on unknown numbers/IDs when you’re continuously being harassed by some telemarketer or collection agency. Moreover it gives an opportunity to check if there are other people experiencing same problem and whether anyone knows the location and contact details for that agency.

Being a wiki site NumberZoom also lets you add to the service by sharing your experience and contributing any additional information you might know regarding particular caller.

Features:

• User-created phone directory for telemarketer and other nuisance callers.
• Search and trace unknown caller IDs.
• See what others have said about that number.
• Contribute by sharing your experience and editing the existing content (sign up needed).
• Other similar websites: PhoneSpamFilter, CallerComplaints, DoNotCall and WhoCalled.US

Check out NumberZoom @ www.numberzoom.com

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• MakeUseOf 'Geeky Fun' - Hillarious Geeky Pics and Videos from different parts of web.

• WhoCallsMe: Identify Unknown Callers
• PhoneSpamFilter: Stop Telemarketing Phone Calls
• EveryCall.us: Easily Trace Calls From Unknown Numbers
• TrapCall: Lets You View Blocked Caller ID
• TemporaryInbox: Temporary Email Forwarding

Features:

• Securely send text information online.
• Password-protect links.
• No email or signup required.
• Data stored on sPaste server for 30 days and deleted afterwards.
• Similar websites: KeyVault, KickNotes, SDMessage and PrivNote.

Check out sPaste @ www.spaste.com

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• WhisperBot: Securely Pass Important Messages Online
• Vanish: Protect Sensitive Data with Self-destructing Messages
• TemporaryInbox: Temporary Email Forwarding
• Privnote: Send Notes that will Self-destruct after being Read
• MakeMeTheKing: Free Temporary Anonymous Email Boxes

When it comes to encrypting text, it’s another no brainer, just add your text, select your preferred method of encryption and click “Encrypt it”. Done.

Features:

• Encrypt text data online.
• Encrypt stuff as many times as you need.
• No signup or registration required.
• Supports MD5, DES, Backwards, Base 64, Leet, Pig latin, Url Encode, HTML Entities Encode encryption methods.

Check out EncryptIt @ www.encit.shamekh.ws

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• The Enkoder Form: Email Address Encryption Tool
• Send: Securely Send Sensitive Information Online
• Ghostery: Know How Web Pages Are Monitoring You
• Yauba: Anonymous Search Engine
• WIKAY: See How Any Website Can Access Your Browsing History

There are two account options available, Free and Premium. The free account provides you with instructions and tells you what to do, which means you need to do everything yourself. The premium account on the hand can handle the hassle for you. You might also want to check Catalog Choice and ProQuo, maybe these guys have even better free account option.

How does GreenDimes free account works ?

• 1. Register and provide GreenDimes with your name and mailing address.
• 2. Log in to your GreenDimes account and select the mailers you want to stop.
• 3. Get removal instructions for each mailer/spammer.
• 4. Note, it may take upto 90 days for mailings to stop.

Go to GreenDimes @ www.greendimes.com

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• CatalogChoice: Reduce Catalog Spam
• Catalog Choice: Opt Out of Catalog Mailings
• WhoCallsMe: Identify Unknown Callers
• TrapCall: Lets You View Blocked Caller ID
• TemporaryInbox: Temporary Email Forwarding

EveryCall.us is a website which lets you easily track such unknown numbers and also it lets you get more information about such numbers by letting you see who has commented about it in the past. Once you find out who exactly called you up, you can take further action. You may also post the number online for the benefit of others.

This website also maintains a top 100 list of annoying numbers (spammers) which you can download in CSV format to your computer. You can always take preemptive action by blocking such numbers in your phone.

Also check similar web services (US only) we have reviewed earlier:

* CallerComplaints – Database of Telemarketer Phone Numbers
* PhoneSpamFilter – Stop Telemarketing Phone Calls
* WhoCalled.US Tells You About That Call You Missed
* DoNotCall: Remove your Phone Number from Telemarketing Lists

Check out EveryCall.us @ www.everycall.us ( Contributed by Abhijeet from Jeet Blog )

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• WhoCallsMe: Identify Unknown Callers
• PhoneSpamFilter: Stop Telemarketing Phone Calls
• NumberZoom: Trace Unknown Caller IDs and Telemarketers
• TrapCall: Lets You View Blocked Caller ID
• TemporaryInbox: Temporary Email Forwarding

The wesbite even provides an option letting you specify how long you want the message to remain available after it has been opened by the recipient. This can be set to anywhere between 15 seconds to 5 minutes.

Features

• Send self-destructing messages.
• Set the the message life time from 15 sec to 5 min.
• No registration or sign-up required.

This is not the first website for sending self-destuctive messages, there are also KickNotes, SDmessage (255 character limit), PrivNote (messages self-terminate after 10 seconds) and BigString (for self-destructing chat messages).

Check out DestructingMessage @ www.destructingmessage.com

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• TemporaryInbox: Temporary Email Forwarding
• MakeMeTheKing: Free Temporary Anonymous Email Boxes
• Vanish: Protect Sensitive Data with Self-destructing Messages
• TempInBox: Temporary Email Account
• sPaste : Securely Send Text Online

When you get a call from a telemarketer, go to the website and search for the phone number. If someone has already reported the number you can see what they say about it. In case you can’t find the number you might also try checking it on WhoCalled.US and CallerComplaints.

It further allows you to browse reported numbers by area code (see screenshot below). There is also a recent submissions sections showing latest complaints.

Other Features

• Reverse phone number lookup
• Request removal of incorrectly submitted phone numbers.
• Free scripts to automate telemarketer blocking on your PBX system.
• Watch funny pranks and videos about telemarketing calls.

While PhoneSpamFilter can help you find out who is calling you it doesn’t provide any simple means to block them. One way to block or at least considerably reduce the number of calls is to add your number to Telemarketing Do Not Call List.

Check out PhoneSpamFilter @ www.phonespamfilter.com

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• WhoCallsMe: Identify Unknown Callers
• NumberZoom: Trace Unknown Caller IDs and Telemarketers
• EveryCall.us: Easily Trace Calls From Unknown Numbers
• TrapCall: Lets You View Blocked Caller ID
• TemporaryInbox: Temporary Email Forwarding

Once you have signed up, search for catalogs you no longer wish to receive and “decline” them. Catalog Choice will then contact the merchant companies and request that your name and address is removed from their mailing lists. The site counts nearly 1 million members and over 13 million processed opt out requests.

Features

• Opt out of merchant catalogs that you no longer wish to receive.
• It can take up to 10 weeks for opt out request to be processed.
• Suggest missing catalogs to be included in the database.
• Available only within the United States.

Go to CatalogChoice @ www.catalogchoice.org

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• GreenDimes: Reduce Postal JunkMail & Stay Green
• WhoCallsMe: Identify Unknown Callers
• TrapCall: Lets You View Blocked Caller ID
• TemporaryInbox: Temporary Email Forwarding
• ProQuo: Remove Personal Info. from Marketing Lists

How does it work?

(1) Register and create an akapost email for example JBlack@akapost.com and associate it with the email, i.e. JBlack@gmail.com that you do not want to be exposed.

(2) Say you want to send an email to someone at blahblah@gmail.com and do not want your actual email to be seen. In that case, simply append the “.akapost.com” to this mail address “blahblah@gmail.com.akapost.com“ and send it.

(3) The message will be then redirected to Akapost where your actual email (JBlack@gmail.com) details will be substituted with the one from Akapost (em>JBlack@akapost.com) and then then sent to the recipient.

(4) When the recipient sends a reply, it first goes to your Akapost email and then gets redirected to your actual email.

Features:

• Keep your email private.
• Free account lets your create one akapost email address and protect one your actual email adddress, premium accounts also available.
• Check out the getting started guide here.

Akapost is not the first service that aims to solve the spam problem, see MakeUseOf email spam category for more such websites.

Go to Akapost @ www.akapost.com

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• TemporaryInbox: Temporary Email Forwarding
• WhoCallsMe: Identify Unknown Callers
• Verify-eMail : Check Suspicious eMails. Real or Not.
• Vanish: Protect Sensitive Data with Self-destructing Messages
• TrapCall: Lets You View Blocked Caller ID