A Bad Cookie
Your computer may be spying on you! If you use the Internet, chances are some personal information about you (area code, zip code, info about your computer, etc.) has been collected while you were on-line News, without your expressed permission. How? It's not done with smoke and mirrors, but with cookies. Say you run across a site with an advertisement. Depending on the ad agency, a "cookie file" is created (or updated) on your hard disk (it's a feature of your web browser), the better to identify you when you visit other sites promoting ads by the same agency. This lets the ad agency build a database about you: sites you visit, ads you've clicked on, searches you've initiated, personal information (did you enter your name into the Email setup page of your browser?) and so forth.How can you stop this privacy invasion? If you use Netscape or Internet Explorer, you can delete the cookie file(s) (rename to something else--"cookie.bad," for example). Realize that you may lose some browser custom homepage settings you've made, since they may also rely on the cookie technology. You can also set your browser to ask your permission each time a site wants to write a cookie. Or, you can download and install anti-cookie software. For MAC, check out Cookie Cutter at http://www.shareware.com. Windows users can check out PGPcookie.cutter at http://www.pgp.com.

Vacation Planning
So, you finally get to leave your computer alone and go on a well-deserved (OK, so you just wanna take off) vacation. And, lest your Email pals wonder what happened to you, you set your Email system (for those whose computers are always connected to the Internet) to auto-generate a reply to any incoming messages that says you'll be unavailable for a time. If you're on any listservers, better rethink your plan! Listservers take any incoming messages and rebroadcast them to all members of the list. So your "vacation" message or assignment itinerary gets rebroadcast to all list members, including you. And, since it's an incoming message, your computer replies that you're on assignment, which gets rebroadcast by the listserver. Feel like you're caught in a time warp?

A Word About Computer Viruses
You've just received an urgent Email, warning you about a computer virus loose on the Internet. Wanting to be sure all your friends are aware, you quickly forward it to them all, without first confirming the validity of the "warning." What now? You may have just created your own "virus" by choking up the Internet with message traffic about a bogus virus. (Ever hear of the "Good Times" virus? 'Nuff said!) Take the time to check the veracity out at the government's Computer Incident Advisory Capability Web site: http://ciac.llnl.gov.

Searching For Software?
As you've no doubt discovered, all those great search engines on the Internet are very good at finding most anything out there, except files. Now there's a search engine specifically designed to locate files, whether they be programs, games, graphics, sounds, or more. Give it a try at http://www.filez.com. They can even search sites whose own Web page lacks search capability. (P.S. It'll want to set a cookie.)

The MarcSpider
No, it's not a new sports car. It's a new service from Digimarc that will give you a report of all the pages on the Web where your watermarked images are appearing. You will be given a hot-linked page to go directly to any site that has reproduced your images, whether or not you've licensed all those folks. The service is over and above the standard Digimarc service, but there will be no additional charge added to your subscriber fee. (http://www.digimarc.com)

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