Right about now, you may be thinking you don’t like that idea. Me neither. Yet, even worse are those cookies that track your activities, gather information and report it back to a website that you’ve never visited – a third-party website. The 2o7 cookie is one such cookie. What is this 2o7 cookie? Let’s take a look at it.

What is This 2o7 Cookie?

The 207 cookie is intended to track web usage and other information. The exact information that the 207.net cookie will track varies from user to user. The information is gathered and reported back to 207.net allegedly anonymously. Meaning, that it contains no information that can be used to identify that the information came from you.

This is hard to verify as there are many, many versions of the 207.net cookie. I’ll get into that in a second.

Who Made 2o7 Tracking CookieIt?

A marketing firm called Omniture creates the cookies that report back to 2o7.net. They do this on behalf of their customers, which include such heavy-hitters as eBay, Wal-Mart, Expedia and Ameritrade.  That’s why it’s hard to tell exactly what the cookie you have may be tracking. eBay will want different information than Ameritrade. One may be tracking the effectiveness of an e-mail campaign, while the other may be tracking their banner ad campaign.

Omniture set up the 207.net domain name as a way to maintain a degree of anonymity and to put the load of all these cookies onto a server that is used for nothing else. From a technology point of view, this is a good practice. From a public relations point of view, it’s a flipping disaster!

How Does this 2o7 Cookie System Work?

When you visit a site that is a client of Omniture, the site drops the cookie onto your computer. The cookie tracks the information it’s designed to track and sends it to the 2o7.net site. Now, Omnitrade does operate other domains that their cookies report to as well, but 207.net seems to be the most popular.

Omnitrade compiles the data into something meaningful and sends that information to their client. If that’s the case, then these cookies are relatively innocuous. However, some clients may also request to have that information sent to someone else as well. That’s where things get a bit colluded. Who are they sending it to? For what reason? Is it really anonymous?

Is the 2o7 Cookie Bad?

People that look at the cookies and see the 207.net part and then visit the 207.net domain would see nothing – a blank page. Then they would do a whois on the domain name and find that it is owned by Omniture. Not knowing who in hades Omniture was, things seemed, dare I say it, ominous? (Omniture does now have a page there that explains the generalities of the cookies.)

The other aspect to these cookies is they do take up resources. They do affect your Internet speeds and your computer speed. It may be an insignificant amount or it may bring you to a near-standstill.

Yet overall, cookies aren’t that bad. There are bad ones, but for the most part they are very helpful. They store information such as website preferences, login information and such, that make it easier to use many websites.

How Do I Stop the 2o7.net Cookie?

If you are still unsure about the 207 cookie, you can delete it and block 3rd party cookies from being set again. You do NOT need special software for this. Omniture does have a page that can help you with this, but guess what? Yep, it sets another cookie. The opt-out cookie only works for the browser and computer that you set it on. So if you use Firefox on your home computer, that’s the only one the opt-out cookie will block from 2o7.net.

Here’s a small tutorial on how to block 3rd party cookies in Firefox, then in Internet Explorer.

How to Block 3rd Party Cookies Like 2o7 in Firefox

It’s pretty easy, yeah. Click on Tools in the top toolbar. Then click on Options. Just like below.

When the Options window opens, click on the cute mask for Privacy, then uncheck the accept third-party cookies checkbox. Now, you will receive only cookies that report back to their originating site. Easy peasy!

Block Third-Party Cookies Like 2o7 in Internet Explorer

Pretty much the same as Firefox, really. Click on Tools in the menu bar, then click on Internet Options.

When the Internet Options window opens, click on the Privacy tab. Now you’ll see the slider. To block only 3rd party cookies, slide the slider to Low. Realistically, having it on Medium at the least is probably safer.

Now with all that done, you have no worries about the 207.net cookie. Sound good?

If this article helped you, I’d be glad to hear about it. If you know something more about 207.net cookie being more dangerous than I’ve described, let us and our readers know in the comments.

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Yes that is why you learned about your Web History and cookies. You even know how to delete them when you are done with your porn your research. But what happens if you forget? Will you be fired, divorced or worse?

If this has you worried then Close N’ Forget is the plug-in for you!

Simply browse on over to their plug-in page here (in French) and you can do your due diligence and read up on it here in English.

After running through the plug-in installation you will have a right click option that looks like this:

The red X followed by “Close and erase cookies for the current site” is Close N’ Forget’s icon. Now for easier use we will add it to our FireFox’s favorite quick links by following these steps:

• Right Click on your tool bar at the top of your browser. And choose Customize.

• Select the Close and forget button, you might have to scroll down. It will look like this:

• Simply drag and drop the icon to your favorites bar and you will see it as the red x icon like this:

Now that we have the icon readily available to us let’s look at the options. This is what will happen when you hit that magic red x. We can see and configure the settings by going to our add-on manager within Firefox. You go to Tools –> Add-ons.

Select Close N’ Forget and then hit options. You can tweak exactly what it will junk with the options above.

The Author says:

Thanks to a few simple options, you can control how your privacy is protected when you close a tab with Close’n Forget. To do that, simply go to the extension manager and open the Close’n Forget options dialog.

You can then activate or not the cookie removal, and you can extend it to all subdomains of the current page’s domain. For example, if the page currently loaded in the tab is http://www.foo.com/bar.html, you can remove cookies for www.foo.com and for .foo.com, but also for media.foo.com, ad.foo.com, tracker.foo.com and so on !

You can also remove the visited site from the browser’s history.

Now let’s put it to work!

You do some super secret browsing and then you go and hit that red X on your toolbar. The button glows an eerie redish brown when you hover over it to help you distinguish it from other  buttons. Hit the button and it closes the active tab and displays a message at the bottom of your browser like so telling you what it did. If nothing appears nothing was removed:

So with the right options selected (all of them!) you can safely and securely remove whatever site you want from your browsing history. But remember if someone is watching you with monitoring software this will not help!

How do you protect your browsing history and how do you get rid of nasty entries from your history? Do you automate it or do you do it manually? Share your methods with us in the comments.

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Today, there are ways to help protect your information from being seen and used without your consent. These “opt-out” lists and “do not call” registries are free to use and in most cases they can be completed online.

OptOutPrescreen

OptOutPrescreen gives you the option to opt-out of credit card offers from Equifax, Experian, Innovis and TransUnion.

Catalog Choice

Choose from a list of merchants that offer an opt-out for catalogs you no longer wish to receive. To read more on how CatalogChoice can help you decrease the amount of junk mail, read more here – catalog choice features

Do Not Call

To opt-out from telemarketing phone calls sign up for the National Do Not Call Registry by visiting DoNotCall

Leave My Child Alone

A variety of resources for parents and information for opting out of OPTIONAL high school data bases that turn over private information on students to military recruiters. Visit LeaveMyChildAlone

Network Advertising Initiative

Online, many advertisers put cookies on your computer so they can gather information used for online advertising. Network Advertising Initiative is a website that offers a way to block the cookies from participating members of their advertising network. To opt-out, visit Network Advantage Initiative.

Network Advantage Initiative also offers tutorials on how to block cookies if you use Explorer, Firefox and Safari:

• Internet Explorer 7.x and Internet Explorer 6.x -Block Cookies Tutorial
• Firefox -Block Cookies Tutorial
• Safari -Block Cookies Tutorial

If you feel you’re being harassed by marketers, try using these sites to opt out.   Do you know of any other sites?  If so, let us know in the comments.

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You may have used some sort of software to “erase your tracks” after doing some web surfing, but the traces are always there. As my wife is fond of saying, “no matter where you go, you leave a footprint.” She’s a Zen master or something.

So where do the tracks get left? Cookies and temp files are obvious and you can take care of them with software like CCleaner. You may also want to use secure file deletion programs to completely remove deleted files from your hard drive such as Eraser.

But what about the stuff you might not know about yet? Here’s a couple of areas that may retain information you don’t want others to see, and freeware to help you deal with them.

Delete Index.dat files

This works like a database. It’s not easily read by the human eye but contains the tracks of what programs you used, sites you visited, and even occasionally passwords. It resides in various places on your Windows computer, and stores information such as your computer usage history, cookies, and browser cache. You can check and delete index.dat file contets with Index.dat Suite.

With the Index.dat Suite you can:

• Use it as an index.dat viewer: Make any index.dat file readable, right from within the Index.dat Suite program. Here’s a screenshot of what the Cache Index.dat file says about my recent visit to Microsoft. I can tell you that in an investigation into a user’s inappropriate use of a business computer, I came across a cookie that had the username and password to a major adult dating site in plain English, using Index.dat Suite. Good thing I’m an ethical administrator.



• Look through the Cookies and History index.dat files to see what sites were visited and when.
• Search for index.dat files anywhere on your computer, open them, and read them.
• Filter the type of files shown from the index.dat file.
• elect records and delete them, which is probably the most important part of this software that this article relates to.

You may be asking now, “Guy, why don’t I just open up the index.dat file, delete everything and then save the file again?”

I would answer that you could do that, but if you are truly a tin-hatter, you would know that a completely blank index.dat file is VERY suspicious to the black-ops type searching your computer. Or your administrator. Same difference.

Delete MRU Keys from Windows Registry

In the Windows Registry (a scary place to be) there are many MRU keys. MRU stands for “Most Recently Used”. Take a look at the screen shot below and you can tell exactly when, and what image I worked on in Photoshop. There can be literally thousands of records like these in your registry. So you can do a lot more with this tool than deleting your browsing history.

MRU Blaster can help you find these records and remove them. (Always back up your registry before altering it – if you don’t know how to do that, don’t mess with the registry.)

MRU Blaster can be set up to automatically clean out MRU registry keys every time you log off or on, or you can run it manually. I prefer to use it manually, because the MRU keys provide the information for the auto-complete feature in a lot of programs. MRU Blaster’s settings window allows you to choose which common MRU keys to check or ignore. This will help you preserve a lot the auto-complete information you may like to keep.

Here’s what a typical scan shows on my computer – 100 MRU lists with 1041 MRU Items. That’s a lot of information about my computer using habits.

The detailed results don’t tell me a lot about what the MRU keys contain. However, just knowing that there are 1141 footprints on my computer tells me it needs to be cleaned. You can select individual keys to clean or leave them all checked for a thorough cleaning.

Now you are like a ninja dancing on rice paper. No footprints!!  Well, at least none that a non-ninja could find.

If you know of any other good track covering tips, let us know in the comments.

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This is one of the reasons why I like Firefox. If you go to Tools–>Options–>Privacy, there is a section there called “Private Data” :

Now, by clicking “clear now”, you can wipe all your private data immediately but you can set it up so it wipes your browsing history, temp files and other stuff automatically everytime Firefox closes. You can obviously achieve this by ticking “Always clear my private data when I close Firefox”.

If you want to be asked first, tick the second box “Ask me before clearing private data” but personally I found it really irritating always having a pop-up box jump out at me. So I turned it off. But I guess it all comes down to personal preference.

But you may not want ALL the private data cleared. For example, I decided to keep my cookies as I didn’t want to log in and out of certain sites all the time (preferring to manually delete them once a week instead). So by clicking on the “settings” button, you can tell Firefox what you want wiped when your browser closes and what you want kept.

Some of them, such as cookies and cache, are fairly straight-forward. But if you would like explanations of the others, Firefox Facts has a nice article explaining what they mean and what they save exactly.

This is a feature that everyone should have enabled by default. As I said, you may find it inconvenient to always have your cookies wiped but you should always have everything else wiped and dumped everytime your browser closes. Otherwise who knows who will be looking at that information behind your back? Your partner? Your boss? Your roommate? Law enforcement without a warrant? These days, in the era of the Patriot Act, it pays to dump your internet data when you’re finished with it.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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The basic premise behind Hitman Pro is that a single anti-spyware tool is often insufficient to detect the sheer variety of malicious code in the form of spyware and /or trojans. It is not an anti-spyware by itself but it downloads some of the popular anti-spyware scanning engines to scan your computer.

Therefore Hitman Pro is more of an umbrella for the rest of the scanning engines to work under. The scanning engines include names like – Prevx CSI Free, Trend Micro, Lavasoft Ad-Aware SE, Spybot Search&Destroy, Webroot SpySweeper, Ewido AntiSpyware, PC Tools Spyware Doctor and Sunbelt Counterspy. It also bundles in two trial anti-virus scanning engines (not real time protection) Trend Micro Sysclean and McAfee VirusScan.

The anti-spyware programs include trial versions of paid software like the Webroot SpySweeper and PC Tools Spyware Doctor. When the trial period is over, you will have to disable them or alternatively if you have the paid component then Hitman Pro recognizes and accepts them.

The interface gives the user control over which spyware engines to install and once the setup commences, the process is pretty much automatic. It’s as if the program switches on its auto-pilot. Each program is downloaded and installed in sequence along with the updates. The interface is vanilla simple and this obviously is a double-sided feature. The simple interface offers ease of understanding and use but it also takes away control over individual engines. The only option that’s available is to select the scanning engines.

Along with automatic scanning, Hitman Pro offers some extra features like a behavioral scan, browser protection and an expert mode.

The “behavioral scan” looks at suspicious registry entries and collates all orphaned links with related information. The users can then go over the results and remove the displayed files.

The “browser security” features (called ‘SurfRight’) allow for a safe surfing environment protected from trojan attacks.

The “expert mode” gives some control to the user to deal with the threats detected. The expert mode also retains a record of the earlier detections so that the user does not have to do a full scan again. At the end of it all, the program generates a single report file for your perusal.

After using the software for some time, I’ve discovered both its good and bad sides. Here’s a small rundown…

The good…

• An integrated all in one solution to take care of your ‘defense’ shield.
• It’s a great free solution for those who don’t like to be saddled with the individual complexities of an anti-spyware program.
• Simple basic control with a single click operation.
• Updates and patches are downloaded automatically.
• Uses the better known free anti-spyware software. Also has support for the paid ones.

The bad…

• Lack of individual control over the scanning engines.
• Multiple engines take up time and slows down the system. It’s best to run the engines when the system is idle. (An auto shutdown checkmark is a thoughtful help)
• As the individual engines bloat with repeated versions, downloads over slow connections could become a problem.

Hitman Pro’s appeal lies in its one-icon solution for multiple anti-spywares. Hitman Pro and its quiver of engines could just help us circle our wagons against the attack of the trojans.

Hitman Pro 2 (2.7.6.0) runs on Windows 2000, XP and Vista.

Note: As of date, Hitman Pro 3 is in beta phase and available for public download. However it offers a different flavored solution to its earlier version. It does not use third party software but relies on its own new sophisticated heuristic technique.

Why don’t you download it, give it a go and then let us know what you think of it? Did it manage to find extra spyware that was hiding in your computer?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Cookies on your PC (and I don’t mean the tasty kind with chocolate chips) are a double-edged sword. On one hand, they are invaluable for remembering your information on webpages, showing you what links you have clicked on, what’s new, saving you having to log in, etc. On the other hand, cookies can also be used for nefarious purposes, such as tracking your PC activity and sending you spyware.

I have just run Ad-Aware on my computer and it picked up 347 cookies which apparently had the potential to “violate my privacy”. The last time I ran Ad-Aware was 4 days ago, so 347 tracking cookies in the space of 4 days is slightly worrying to say the least.

That’s why I am starting to use Karen’s Cookie Viewer which will pull up all the cookies made on your computer, give you information on each one and give you the option to delete them.

The advantage here is that you can launch a pre-emptive strike. If you visit, either deliberately or accidently, a dodgy website, you can then pull up Karen’s Cookie Viewer and see if that website has left any nasty surprises on your computer. If so, you can zap them right there and then. Otherwise, any cookies of a dubious nature will sit on your computer and grow roots until you finally run a spyware scan (whenever that may be). Better to find the cookie well in advance and send it on its way to cookie heaven before it can do anything adverse to your PC.

By: Mark O’Neill is a freelance writer, proofreader and blogger. Visit his blog at BetterThanTherapy.net

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