I just saw this advertisement on Facebook:

and i thought: ‘hey, i want a cartoon character, too’ and clicked on the ad. What i got then was not an easy-to-use cartoon generator, but a weird page saying this:

By clicking “Click Here – It’s Free” below and downloading the Fast Browser Search toolbars, I accept and agree to make Fast Browser Search my default search provider, abide by the Fast Browser Search End User License Agreement and Privacy Policy, and receive relevant search results in response to misspelled or incorrectly formatted browser address requests. Tattoons only works on Facebook.

So i read the privacy policy and the license agreement and found things like this:

Further, MTWB reserves the right to use your: (i) Social Networking Site Information to serve you targeted marketing messages within the applicable Social Networking Site(s) and other online venues; and (ii) Site Data for tracking and, where necessary, verification purposes with MTWB’s third party partners.

So in addition to your character (i don’t know if you get one at all, ’cause i stopped the installation process) you will install a browser plugin which collects data and annoys you with marketing messages.

I have a Facebook-profile and i have set my privacy setting for my friends-list to the value ‘Only friends’ …

…which should mean, that only friends are able to see my friends.

So i logged out of Facebook, called my profile page and voila, there are friends displayed. Does this make sense? I guess not! Except if all the users of the internet are part of my ‘Only friends’-group. :)

Update: Ok, finally i have found how to solve this redundant stuff. Facebook differs between ‘Profile page’ and ‘Search’. So in the search privacy page i can select what the people are able to see.

1. create an extra google account for this
2. always delete the Google cookies after and before using this
3. use a temporary email address when registering for the Google account (e.g. meltmail.com)

• Tor – a brief introduction and legal aspects

He also experienced what it means to run a Tor exit-node in Germany which was used for illegal stuff. Read his story.

I2P is an anonymizing network, offering a simple layer that identity-sensitive applications can use to securely communicate. All data is wrapped with several layers of encryption, and the network is both distributed and dynamic, with no trusted parties.