13 things that you can do to improve your privacy online

I was asked by a mate of mine recently, 'Dikkii.  Why don't you do a blog post about all the privacy stuff that you have done with your browser?'

Personally, this mate of mine is pretty switched on, internet-wise (I cracked a pun!) so I was a bit taken aback that he genuinely wanted to know about why he should get his web-surfing privacy under control.  I thought that he might already have this sorted out.

The reality of it all is, that these days, it's a game with moving goal posts.  To keep up with the companies mining your browsing habits really needs one to be on one's toes.  But it's so difficult.  Consider these:

On why the media should embrace more regulation. Part 2

 In our first part, we heavily criticised News Corp for just being a bad news organisation.  By that, I mean that as a news organisation, they are bad.  Incredibly bad.  (I didn’t mean that they just produce bad news, oh heavens to Betsy, no)

It should be pointed out, though, once again, that I was only singling out News as the worst of what appears to be a very bad bunch.  I listed a whole bunch of crimes committed by the media in part 1, some of which were also committed by other media sources as well.

A really good example of disgraceful media practice that is committed across the board, is the tendency of the financial media to regurgitate media releases from companies, without any sort of objective research.  Media Watch appears to have strangely left financial journalists alone to date, but will pursue other journalists who regurgitate press releases.

On why the media should embrace more regulation. Part 1

Over the last few weeks we’ve seen some rather interesting stuff in the media involving the media. We’ve seen all hell break loose in the UK with what appears to be becoming known as ‘Hackgate’. We’ve seen the Herald-Sun publish a call to assassinate the Prime Minister. We’ve also seen the media circuses around the cases of Dominique Strauss-Khan and Casey Anthony where the media essentially judged these folks guilty before their cases had even been heard. In Anthony’s case, they then screamed hysterically about the jury being wrong, even publishing questionable articles where jurors allegedly disclosed a preference for going home rather than finding someone guilty.

I think I'll avoid the issue about concentrated media ownership – it’s probably outside the realm of what I want to blog about here, but what I will add is the sheer, unmitigated bias that passes for journalism in anything that comes out of News Corporation.  Although, it's fair to say that 2UE are probably much worse.