Consumers are only just starting to realize what they need to do to protect their privacy, Abine CEO Bill Kerrigan discusses on digits.

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It’s often been said that we, as users, are “the product” of networks like Google or Facebook. But there is now a new wave of privacy centric start-ups seeking to give us back control of our personal data. One of these is Abine, the venture-backed Cambridge, Mass. based company which boasts a suite of products that protect our online privacy. Data protection is the “new frontier”, Abine’s CEO Bill Kerrigan, who describes his startup as “the online privacy company”, told me.

Indeed, re-empowering us with control of our own online data, Kerrigan insists, represents the next multi-billion dollar opportunity. And while he is hopeful that some of today’s major Internet players – such as Twitter, Mozilla and Microsoft – do respect our online information, Kerrigan – who used to run sales at McAfee – nonetheless warns that we are “one massive data breach away from Armageddon.” That’s scary for consumers, of course; but might actually be rather good news for entrepreneurs like Kerrigan who are betting that privacy really is the next Big Thing.

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You can choose to broadcast your life but the bystanders around you don't choose," says Sarah Downey, analyst at the online privacy group Abine. "The disconnect is that you're wearing these sorts of technology, you end up being a vector for surveillance. Everyone around you is your unwitting subject."

Continuing with the theme of overload, rarely a new way to share content launches without some reference to the principles of George Orwell's Big Brother. As a proof of how prevalent and how easy it is to be Big Brother now, I searched for an 18-year-old picked at random from a Twitter search. Within an hour, using only information in the public domain, I had his home phone number, postcode, school he attended, views on gender discrimination, his approach to casual homophobia - even golf handicap and the club at which he plays.

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There’s no doubt it’s a data driven world. But increasing concerns about companies’ collection and uses of personal internet user data have given rise to a few solutions.

One is a personal data locker where users would be able to store their own information and grant companies limited access, rather than abide by companies’ privacy policies. Some people have even talked about compelling companies to disclose the data they keep on consumers, even though it might be hard to understand and use.

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As soon as you leave the office of a prospective employer, chances are she puts your resume aside and turns to Google to find what you've really been up to. And if you haven't taken the time to clean up your Facebook page, Twitter feed and other social media links that routinely show up in a Google search, you could lose a good opportunity.

Sixty percent of graduates are not concerned about their online profiles affecting their ability to secure a job, according to privacy software maker Abine's survey of 500 college grads from schools across the country. But they should be.

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A seasoned employee knows the keys to workplace success include showing up early, staying late, dressing well, and seeking out mentors. This advice can be called the “No-Duh Guide to Corporate Ascendancy.” Any idiot who texts during a job interview doesn’t deserve the job. Yet, beyond these obvious tips, real-world workplace advice can prove enlightening and useful. So here’s a round-up of unconventional advice gathered from business executives we spoke with that they say has helped their careers, and that they are also what they look for in potential employees:

Create an alter-ego. Social media provides insight into everyone’s lives. It’s possible to track your boss via his Twitter feed. And, in turn, he can see your personal life, particularly those drunken party pictures. To this end, 35% of new college graduates have posted comments containing profanity, 30% have posted comments or pictures about alcohol, and 7% have posted content about illegal behavior, according to online privacy firm Abine. While there are always privacy settings, another effective way to separate a corporate identity from the personal is to create a stage name for your professional career. Hollywood has been doing this for ages. Actress Natalie Portman is actually Natalie Hershlag; Mark Vincent turned into Vin Diesel. The idea allows you to keep each side separate from the other, and if social media is full of images of you over-indulging in scandalous actions, a stage name allows you to start your professional life with a clean slate. Many are already doing this on LinkedIn. Only 38% of LinkedIn members use their real names on the site, reports Abine.

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Modern technology has not only changed students' collegiate experience, but their post-graduation job search as well. Today, individuals like Joel Smith, who recently graduated from the University of Tennessee, have jobs lined up thanks to social media, WATE-TV reports. Smith credits Facebook, LinkedIn and a lot of networking for helping him secure employment before he even earned his degree.

Unfortunately, not all students have as much luck as Smith - especially those who have not taken the time to tidy up their social media profiles before applying for jobs. A large number of graduates from the class of 2013 are among those who have not made improving their online presence a priority.

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Among Boston-area venture capital firms, Atlas Venture of Cambridge has been one of the most aggressive at providing seed funding to tech startups in recent years.

And so far, Atlas reports that seven of its seed-funded tech companies have gone on to raise Series A rounds — with all of the rounds including Atlas, and all of the companies based in the Boston area.

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When it comes to privacy, many of us are bare to the world. That’s why it’s important to understand Facebook privacy/account settings and how to alter them. The Web abounds with tips and tricks to do just that. Here are a few from major online privacy advocates.

1. Abine, A leader in online privacy software: To limit others posting on your timeline, edit your profile and change to “friends,” “only me,” or make a custom list of people you trust.

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Two surveys released earlier this month show that privacy remains important for Internet users – the problem is that the debate has been skewed away from reality. It’s time we brought this issue back out of Crazy Land.

The second survey (PDF), conducted by online privacy company Abine (maker of anti-tracker browser plugin DoNotTrackMe), also found that privacy is important to most people – 90 percent of the 1,004 respondents said so. Furthermore, Abine found that Millennials conducted themselves differently online – but not in the ways implied by the Annenberg study. Rather than abandoning privacy altogether, the Abine survey shows that young adults are simply more savvy about controlling their info online.

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It’s already bad enough that surfing through your Facebook News Feed is becoming such a chore because of ads the social network thinks you’d be interested in – but then earlier this year, Facebook revealed its intentions to further stretch its ad targeting program by partnering with Datalogix, Epsilon, Acxiom, and BlueKai. When you surf sites on the Internet or use rewards or loyalty cards when you go shopping in the mall, you unintentionally leave a trace of your consumer habits and information, and these four companies gather that information to help them come up with better targeted advertisements. The partnership with Facebook plans to bring that information to the social networking site so that companies would be able to reach out to the right users, and maybe even lessen the annoyance you feel when you see a product page on your stream you don’t remember liking.

Facebook ads are becoming more predominant these days, and we’ve tried our best to minimize (if not completely opt-out of) seeing them. With the emergence of this initiative shared by Facebook and consumer data brokers, it may become harder to deal with – now that data sourced from outside Facebook is on the table, limiting your personal information on the social network will no longer be enough to get you off the ad radar. So if you want to do everything in your power to stop the Facebook tracking, these are the four places you need to head and opt-out of.

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Two studies released this week show that so-called millennials and adults in their thirties and beyond view online privacy differently and take different approaches to protect it.

The Abine survey looked at the specific actions younger and older users had taken to safeguard their online privacy. Baby boomers, Abine found, were more likely to define privacy in terms of offline behaviors, while millennials often thought of it as a digital phenomenon.

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There are a ton of browser extensions that promise to protect your privacy, which leads to some natural questions: Which is the best? Do they all do the same thing? What should I really download? In this guide, we're going to look at the most popular browser extensions that promise to protect your privacy online, and give you our recommendations.

We've talked about why you should care about your privacy several times here, so whether you choose to do something to protect yourself is up to you—we're not going to rehash it. Instead, we're going to dive into the tools available to keep your data safe. Most of them fall into three groups: add-ons that prevent third parties from tracking your movements, add-ons that block ads and scripts, and passive security tools that enforce good habits. Don’t worry, though. You don't need to download a ton of apps to keep yourself safe and your data close to pocket. Here are the best in each group.

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For more than a decade we've been hearing that privacy is dead, especially when it comes to online privacy. It's hard to argue with the evidence.

Law enforcement agencies routinely obtain location and call data from wireless carriers -- some 1.3 million times in 2011 alone, according to documents obtained by a U.S. Senate committee. Thanks to laws written when fax machines were considered high-tech, government agencies can access data from cloud storage with minimal judicial oversight. And with potential laws like the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), Congress wants to enable private companies to share even more customer data with Uncle Sam.

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Facebook has introduced a new advertising feature that allows companies to show you ads based on what you buy offline.

Next time you go shopping at the local supermarket, Facebook — and its advertisers — want to know what you buy. The social media giant this week introduced a new program that allows its advertisers to show ads based on people's offline buying habits. Like many previous Facebook initiatives, the new feature, called "Partner Categories," is raising privacy concerns.

"It's a merger of online and offline IDs," said Sarah Downey, a privacy analyst and attorney with Abine, an online privacy company. "As a consumer it's tough to parse out all the different pieces of information."

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If you feel like Facebook has more ads than usual, you aren't imagining it: Facebook's been inundating us with more and more ads lately, and using your information—both online and offline—to do it. Here's how it works, and how you can opt out.

For most people, Facebook's advertising system is insider-baseball that doesn't really affect how we use the service. But as the targeted ads—the advertisements that take the data you provide to offer ads specific to you—get more accurate and start pulling in information from other sources (including the stuff you do offline), it's more important than ever to understand their system. To figure out how this all works, I spoke with Elisabeth Diana, manager of corporate communication at Facebook. Let's kick it off with the basics of how the targeted ads work online before moving on to some of the changes we'll see with the recent inclusion of offline shopping data.

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When Mark Zuckerberg and friends debuted Facebook Home yesterday, they downplayed the ever-growing importance your data has for the company. While the Facebook-obsessed may love Home, chances are your privacy won't feel welcome at all.

Facebook has earned a reputation for developing new products and features that are respectful of user privacy, and then slowly, sometimes with great subtlety and sometimes with mastodon-like lumbering, walking those policies back to a decidedly less-respectful state.

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Just a decade ago, people around the country worried about their personal privacy as cell phones and portable electronic devices started featuring small cameras, allowing users to easily snap photos of anyone, anywhere, at any time. Now, almost 10 years after camera phones hit the mainstream market, a new portable device is striking a similar nerve, and it’s raising issues about the future of public privacy and how consumers adapt to new technologies.

Later this year, Google is expected to introduce Google Glass, a hands-free device shaped like a pair of glasses that responds to simple voice commands and hand gestures to complete tasks like capturing video and giving directions. It’s a tech-lover’s dream, but already, questions are arising about how the device will impact peoples’ personal space.

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There are quite a few other features shared between this antivirus and the standalone firewall. Both offer a year of "Good Start" credit protection from Identity Guard, a button that invokes your browser's privacy mode, and 5GB of online backup hosted by IDrive. New this year, both will check your Facebook account and report on any privacy issues.

Powered by partner Abine, the Do Not Track Me toolbar button warns you about advertising links on the current Web page as well as other links that could be used to track your browsing habits. With one quick click you can set ZoneAlarm to prevent this type of tracking. Advertisers can choose to ignore the industry-standard Do Not Track header, but ZoneAlarm actively prevents tracking.

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This scene may seem like a simple trip to the store, something each of us does countless times every week. What many of us may not realize, however, is that the use of CVS ExtraCare and other loyalty rewards cards is but one of many ways we toss precious details about ourselves into the grip of an impossibly complex shadow industry that has increasing control over our lives. I’m talking, of course, about data brokers.

Those concerned with even minor violations of privacy have likely heard the term “data broker,” probably with a scowl on our faces. These are the companies that “know more about you than you know about yourself.” They collect information about the lives of nearly every adult in the U.S., from what we buy to who we love. And they use that data to make themselves, and countless other companies, bloody rich.

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Every day, tens of millions of people post remarkably intimate details about their lives on Facebook. And yet the operators of the online social network say they still don’t know enough about their subscribers.

So Facebook is purchasing even more information on its members from data brokers — companies that collect huge amounts of sensitive information about the everyday activities of millions of Americans. Facebook will use the data, as well as information provided voluntarily by members, to target them with more relevant — and profitable — advertisements.

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People search and background check websites, such as Zabasearch.com and Peoplefinders.com, make their business off our personal information--our names, addresses, phone numbers, and more. It's a terrible situation where to protect our privacy we have to go through all the work of opting-out of these databases. If you want to protect your privacy (as much as possible), you can find step-by-step removal instructions or hire services to do this for you with the sources below.

A little more than a year ago, Reddit user pibbman (thanks to LawyerCT's help) posted a list of major sites that gather and sell or publish your personal information, along with links and instructions for removal. Since posting about this on Lifehacker, I've found a similar guide, which is easier to read at a glance, from privacy company Abine, as well as services that will do it for you.

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Facebook has announced that it’s teaming up with four of the world’s largest corporate data brokers to “enhance” the ad experience for users. Datalogix, Epsilon, Acxiom, and BlueKai obtain information gathered about users through online means (such as through cookies when users surf the web) as well as through offline means (such as through loyalty cards at supermarkets and product warranty cards). Through the new relationship with Facebook, companies will be able to display advertisements to Facebook users based on data that these data brokers have on individuals.

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Privacy is no longer just a regulatory headache. Increasingly, Internet companies are egging each other on to prove to consumers that their data are safe and in their control.

In some instances, established companies are trying to gain market advantage by casting themselves as more privacy-friendly than their rivals. For example, Mozilla, an underdog in the browser market, suggested last week that it would allow its users to disable third-party tracking software altogether.

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Online tracking is a bete noir of privacy enthusiasts, but many users are unaware of the data that advertisers and social networks collect about them as they browse the Web. Here is a tool to help you monitor and prevent such activity.

DoNotTrackMe is a free browser extension that blocks most major trackers and displays a visual representation of exactly how many trackers are operating on a given site. It works with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. After you install it, a small button in the top-right corner of your browser displays a real-time count of how many tracking companies are monitoring your activity.

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Established companies are trying to gain market advantage by casting themselves as more privacy-friendly than their rivals.

News from the technology industry, including start-ups, the Internet, enterprise and gadgets.

In some instances, established companies are trying to gain market advantage by casting themselves as more privacy-friendly than their rivals. For example, Mozilla, an underdog in the browser market, suggested last week that it would allow its users to disable third-party tracking software altogether.

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A few months back, an advertising executive argued that more online privacy would kill free speech. Richard Frankel, president of the advertising company Rocket Fuel, titled the post “How the Do Not Track Plan Will Ultimately Kill Free Speech.”

It’s understandable that advertisers are so resistant to the concept of Do Not Track – it could change the way they access data, which would force them to innovate their business models and practices.

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Mozilla has announced that, starting with Firefox 22, the popular open source web browser will begin blocking third-party cookies by default. That means only websites you actually visit will be allowed to set cookies; advertisers on those sites will no longer be able to easily track you by setting a cookie.

While there has long been the option to block third-party cookies, by default Firefox has always allowed them.

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Facebook’s targeted advertising is already pretty sophisticated in understanding your tastes, but their ability to monitor your transactions could soon follow you into the real world. According to Ad Age, Facebook has teamed up with several data provider companies to track your purchases in actual brick-and-mortar stores. It will allow for brands to hone in even more accurately on consumers with targeted advertising on the site. On its surface, this plan seems like a giant leap toward Big Brother, but how it will work in practice isn’t quite so sinister.

The ad targeting will take place when data companies match up, anonymously, retail loyalty program members and Facebook users by using the phone number and email address members gave when they signed up for both services. However, Facebook is going to face an uphill battle in convincing a skeptical public that their personal information is safe, especially given the news of the recent Facebook hack reportedly perpetrated by Eastern European or Chinese hackers. “Facebook’s challenge is going to be breaking down the process in ways that are simple to understand and fostering confidence that this powerful data can be handled in a responsible way,” MEC Social Lead Kristine Segrist told Ad Age.

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Every day, you'll likely be handing out more than 700 items of personal data. But a growing chorus of experts believe that, rather than giving in to the inevitable loss of privacy, it's becoming easier for consumers to control that information.

Sarah Downey is an attorney and analyst for the online privacy software company Abine, which offers a service called DeleteMe that erases data from a number of tracking sites. The company also markets a "do not track me" option. About three million users count on that.

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More than half of U.S. adults shares details of their love lives on Facebook, according to a study of more than 1,000 people published by Abine, a privacy software company.

Nearly one in five respondents had posted provocative pictures of themselves or details of romantic encounters online. But more than three in five were not confident that what they shared on social media would remain private.

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Like a third wheel on a date night, the Internet now has a front row seat to many people's romantic lives, with more than one-third of social media users giving their account user names and passwords to the person they're dating, according to a Valentine's Day survey of more than 1,000 U.S. adults conducted by online privacy firm Abine.

Despite increasing privacy concerns around social media and the Web, people continue to broadcast the sultry details of their love lives to the world, which presents former couples with an added challenge after the relationship status changes and the digital detritus remains.The survey results also illustrate how intertwined real-life relationships have become with digital lives: After a breakup, most people (63 percent) said they unfriend or block their exes on social media sites, and half of those surveyed said they would untag themselves in photos with their exes.

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Looking to have a romantic Valentine's Day with your sweetheart? Maybe you should use Facebook a little less.

Facebook just may be the third wheel in your relationship, according to a study from Abine Inc., an online privacy company based in Boston.

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As Valentine’s Day is Thursday, many are taking a look at how Facebook users share intimate details through the social network. A new study by Abine shows that many people aren’t shy about posting information such as relationship status and sexual orientation.

In a study of more than 1,000 U.S. adults, 50 percent said they post about their love lives on Facebook, compared with 37 percent who do so on other social media sites.

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An alarming news report that Raytheon Corp. has developed lightning-fast software that scours social media to profile millions of users — predicting their future behavior — has online privacy experts fearful that Big Brother could take a big technological step forward.

“This sort of software takes a very Dragnet approach,” Ginger McCall of the Electronic Privacy Information Center said about Raytheon’s Rapid Information Overlay Technology software. “It’s designed to pull in large amounts of information from not just people who are the subject of a criminal investigation but a large number of social network users.”

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Come Valentine's Day, Facebook is expecting a 200 percent increase in the number of new relationships posted to the site compared to any other day of the year. And with the flood of new love, ordinarily rational people may forget the basics of Internet privacy.

"We all know love can make us a little crazy, so it’s not surprising that people change their behavior and might go outside their typical comfort zones,” Sarah Downey, privacy analyst for Abine, an Internet security company, said in a statement. Abine conducted a survey that exposed the risky computer-related things that people do when they're part of a new relationship.

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Secret chats and rendezvous scheduling are commonly being done behind significant others’ backs via social networks. And as people become more and more tech savvy, cheaters are finding craftier ways of using these platforms for illicit acts of infidelity.

Of 2,400 American adults that have admitted to cheating at least one this past year, a recent study found that one-third of these adults have created a social media or email account that their partner didn’t know existed. And the most common social network that would be used to create a fake social media profile, with nearly 67 percent of cheaters having one, is Facebook.

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What if two-thirds of the people on the Web were invisible, secretly visiting websites and searching for products and services while leaving Internet giants like Google and Facebook in the dark about what they were doing?

With no information on those people's activities, there could be no targeted advertising for them and much of the multi-billion-dollar ad Web market would collapse, forcing big changes in the business models of today's biggest and most powerful Internet companies.

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Congratulations for taking a strong pro-privacy stance in your Feb. 4 editorial “Europe Moves Ahead on Privacy.” The lack of online privacy is a huge problem, and it’s only getting worse. As you pointed out, most consumers are still unaware of the scale and scope of online tracking. My company’s work and our collaboration with the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology on the Web Privacy Census confirm that online tracking is becoming more prevalent and sophisticated.

American consumers are a long way away from the real transparency, choice and control over their digital footprint that they need. While many American consumers might appreciate our government enacting policies like those being considered in Europe, the United States isn’t Europe and such privacy policies are not on the immediate horizon. But we are not as helpless in the face of the attack on privacy. Where policy has failed, technology has succeeded.

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Facebook is a personal vault that can contain photos of your firstborn, plans to bring down your government and, occasionally, a record of your indiscretions.

It can be scoured by police officers, partners and would-be employers. It can be mined by marketers to show tailored advertisements.

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The privacy test reports on any recent posts you've made totally public and any that you've allowed friends of friends to view. If you've been tagged in any posts in the last month it will report that too. A statistics pane reports the number of posts, likes, shares, and comments you've made during the month. Each of these is a live link to a detail report, for example, a list of all your comments.

New in this edition, a simple test will check the privacy of your Facebook account. Click a button on the toolbar to install the Facebook app, then launch it for a quick summary of privacy issues in your account.

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I typically ignore phone calls from unknown numbers, and that goes double for area codes from Texas.

It's almost always my credit card issuer, Bank of America, and it's almost always a courtesy call that lasts way longer than I have tolerance for.

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If you think someone is hot on your heels, you're not paranoid; you're right. In 2011, identity fraud increased by 13 percent. More than 11.6 million adults in America became a victim of identity theft, according to Javelin Strategy & Research.

Should you pay for an identity theft service? Protection can include monitoring bank account and credit card activity, the use of your Social Security number, assistance in restoring your identity and more. "For about $10 a month, they are worth it," says www.IDTheftSecurity.com CEO Robert Siciliano.

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Are there days when you wish you could just disappear from the Internet? Maybe you're haunted by things you've said on social networks, or you're just sick of having companies track and catalog your every move.

Yeah, it'd be nice to pull the plug on the whole thing, but it would be easier to stop a runaway train, right? Actually, it's not terribly difficult to pull the Internet equivalent of escaping to a deserted island. All it takes is time and tenacity.

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