COINTELPRO: Counterintelligence Program

http://www.whale.to/b/cointelpro_q.html

COINTELPRO

COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence Program)

[back] FBI  

["COINTELPRO was the FBI's secret program to undermine the popular upsurge which swept the country during the 1960s.....The FBI set out to eliminate "radical" political opposition inside the US. When traditional modes of repression (exposure, blatant harassment, and prosecution for political crimes) failed to counter the growing insurgency, and even helped to fuel it, the Bureau took the law into its own hands and secretly used fraud and force to sabotage constitutionally- protected political activity. Its methods ranged far beyond surveillance, and amounted to a domestic version of the covert action for which the CIA has become infamous throughout the world."--Brian Glick.  Gang Stalking is modern Cointelpro.]

Hoffman, Abbie

See: War Against Alternative MedicineGang Stalking  American Indian Movement(AIM)  Police agents provocateurs

See: Mockingbird  CHAOS [2009 July] Judaic Front Group Secretly Promotes Neo-Nazism 

Paul Wolf  William Schaap  Brian Glick Angus Mackenzie  Jim Vander Wall

[2010 Oct] Meet Carol Two Eagle  "I'm The Man, here. I have all the power. I control everything. You can't continue doing what you've been doing! It's not allowed! You give the People hope, & that's not allowed by The Program!” 

Robert Wood, victim of ORGANIZED/GANG STALKING/COINTELPRO

Articles
United States Terrorism and Repression Against Its Own People by DT Stockton

Is the US a Police State?  When wasn't it?

[2009 Nov] The Jimi Hendrix Political Harassment, Kidnap and Murder Experience by Alex Constantine

Church Committee reports

[2006] A break-in to end all break-ins. In 1971, stolen FBI files exposed the government's domestic spying program.

[2004] An Introduction to The Signs And Techniques of Online COINTELPRO By Stephen DeVoy

[1999] Testimony of Mr. William Schaap on the role of the U.S. Government in the assassination of Martin Luther King 

COINTELPRO Revisited - Spying & Disruption By Brian Glick

COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story By Paul Wolf 

The Hunt for Red Menace: Evidence is Immaterial. COINTELPRO Media Operations 

[2002] FBI on Trial. Jury awards $4.4 million to a pair of Earth First activists by Christine Keyser

[2002] Bombed and framed. FBI pays millions in damages to eco-activists by Andy Howell

[1997] How the CIA Got Away With Domestic Spying

Timelines:
Department Of Army Report On The Use Of Chemical Agent Research, Intelligence Corps Experimentation With Hallucinogenic Drugs.
Summary Of CIA Testing Of Lsd, Chemicals For Altering Human Behavior With A Wide Variety Of Methods.
Summary Of FBI Counter Intelligence Operations As Applied To Stated "Apostles Of Non-Violence," "New Left," "Advocates Of New Lifestyles"

Victims
Leonard Peltier

Books
[1999] WAR AT HOME by Brian Glick

[1999] SECRETS  The CIA's War at Home By Angus Mackenzie

[1990] The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret War Against Domestic Dissent by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall.

[1988] Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement by Ward Churchill, Jim Vander Wall 

FBI Secrets -- An Agent's Expose by M. Wesley Swearingen

A WRIT FOR MARTYRS by Eustace Mullins  The FBI’s illegal campaign to forever silence the message of dissident Eustace Mullins

External
COINTELPRO The Sabotage Of Legitimate Dissent
COINTELPRO: THE FBI WAR AGAINST LEONARD PELTIER
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/FBI/FBI_watch.html

Quotes
The FBI and its allies waged all-out war on AIM and the Native people. From 1973-76, they killed 69 residents of the tiny Pine Ridge reservation, a rate of political murder comparable to the first years of the Pinochet regime in Chile. To justify such a reign of terror and undercut public protest against it, the Bureau launched a complementary program of psychological warfare. [1999] WAR AT HOME by Brian Glick

Within months of taking office, Reagan pardoned W. Mark Felt and Edward S. Miller, the only FBI officials convicted of COINTELPRO crimes. His congressional allies publicly honored these criminals and praised their work. The President continually revived the tired old Red Scare, adding a new "terrorist" bogeyman, while Attorney General Meese campaigned to narrow the scope of the Bill of Rights and limit judicial review of the constitutionality of government action. [1999] WAR AT HOME by Brian Glick

"Black bag jobs" are burglaries performed in order to obtain the written materials, mailing lists, position papers, and internal documents of an organization or an individual. At least 10,000 American homes have been subjected to illegal breaking and entering by the FBI, without judicial warrants. COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story By Paul Wolf 

If I suspect someone is an undercover FBI agent, I just casually interject the fag thing into the conversation, then watch the reaction. For example, I attended an anti-Iraq War rally last September 24, 2005, and there were a bunch of guys screaming these terrible things about the United States Government in front of the White House. Basically, I agreed with a lot of what they were saying, but they spewed it with such venom, it was off-putting. So I decided to test one of them. I walked right up to this young guy and casually said, "You know, J. Edgar Hoover was faggot." He immediately avoided eye-contact. As he looked away, he timidly replied, "I had heard he was a cross-dresser, but I never knew he was homosexual." That was quite a passive response from someone who had just been shouting anti-government rhetoric. I thought to myself, "Bingo." John Lennon's murder - Discussion with Salvador Astucia

The flyer contained several bullet points like that. For example, one line read: "If you see someone with a bullhorn condemning the war and saying lots of sensible things, then tells you to join his group of Communists or Nazis, he's probably on the FBI's payroll." Another good one was "If you see someone making  a speech or handing out flyers containing extremely divisive issues that have nothing to do with the Iraq war, like gay marriage for example, he's probably on the FBI's payroll." The flyer was really pretty funny, I thought. But obviously the FBI people didn't agree. John Lennon's murder - Discussion with Salvador Astucia

Then on March 8, 1971, a group calling itself the Citizen's Commission to Investigate the FBI, broke into an FBI office in a small town called Media, Pennsylvania. They subjected the FBI to what the FBI has been habitually subjecting political dissidents to throughout the course of its history. That is, in Bureau parlance, a black bag job. The information they obtained was widely distributed through left and peace movement channels, and summarized the following week in the Washington Post. 
An analysis of the documents in this FBI office revealed that 1 percent were devoted to organized crime, mostly gambling; 30 percent were "manuals, routine forms, and similar procedural matter"; 40 percent were devoted to political surveillance and the like, including two cases involving right-wing groups, ten concerning immigrants, and over 200 on left or liberal groups. Another 14 percent of the documents concerned draft resistance and "leaving the military without government permission." The remainder - only 15% - concerned bank robberies, murder, rape, and interstate theft. COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story By Paul Wolf 

According to FBI memoranda of the 1960s, "Key black activists" were repeatedly arrested "on any excuse" until "they could no longer make bail." The FBI made use of informants, often quite violent and emotionally disturbed individuals, to present false testimony to the courts, to frame COINTELPRO targets for crimes they knew they did not commit. In some cases the charges were quite serious, including murder. COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story By Paul Wolf 

Many counterintelligence techniques involve the use of paid informants. Informants become agents provocateurs by raising controversial issues at meetings to take advantage of ideological divisions, by promoting emnity with other groups, or by inciting the group to violent acts, even to the point of providing them with weapons.  Over the years, FBI provocateurs have repeatedly urged and initiated violent acts, including forceful disruptions of meetings and demonstrations, attacks on police, bombings, and so on, following an old strategy of Tsarist police director TC Zubatov: "We shall provoke you to acts of terror and then crush you." COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story By Paul Wolf 

A concise description of political warfare is given in a passage from a CIA paper entitled "Nerve War Against Individuals," referring to the overthrowing of the government of Guatemala in 1954: 
The strength of an enemy consists largely of the individuals who occupy key positions in the enemy organization, as leaders, speakers, writers, organizers, cabinet members, senior government officials, army commanders and staff officers, and so forth. Any effort to defeat the enemy must therefore concentrate to a great extent upon these key enemy individuals.
    If such an effort is made by means short of physical violence, we call it "psychological warfare." If it is focussed less upon convincing those individuals by logical reasoning, but primarily upon moving them in the desired direction by means of harassment, by frightening, confusing and misleading them, we speak of a "nerve war". 
    The COINTELPROs clearly met the above definition of "nerve wars," and, in the case of the American Indian Movement in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, the FBI conducted a full-fledged counterinsurgency war, complete with death squads, disappearances and assassinations, recalling Guatemala in more recent years.
    The full story of COINTELPRO may never be told. The Bureau's files were never seized by Congress or the courts or sent to the National Archives. Some have been destroyed. Many counterintelligence operations were never committed to writing as such, or involve open investigations, and ex-operatives are legally prohibited from talking about them. Most operations remain secret until long after the damage has been done COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story By Paul Wolf 

Between 1968-1971, FBI-initiated terror and disruption resulted in the murder of Black Panthers Arthur Morris, Bobby Hutton, Steven Bartholomew, Robert Lawrence, Tommy Lewis, Welton Armstead, Frank Diggs, Alprentice Carter, John Huggins, Alex Rackley, John Savage, Sylvester Bell, Larry Roberson, Nathaniel Clark, Walter Touré Pope, Spurgeon Winters, Fred Hampton, Mark Clark, Sterling Jones, Eugene Anderson, Babatunde X Omarwali, Carl Hampton, Jonathan Jackson, Fred Bennett, Sandra Lane Pratt, Robert Webb, Samuel Napier, Harold Russell, and George Jackson. COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story By Paul Wolf 

The Chicago Special Agent in Charge, Marlin Johnson, who also oversaw the assassinations of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, makes it quite obvious that he views the murder of Malcolm X as something of a model for "successful" counterintelligence operations. COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story By Paul Wolf 

During the 1960's, the FBI's role was not to protect civil rights workers, but rather, through the use of informants, the Bureau actively assisted the Ku Klux Klan in their campaign of racist murder and terror. 
    Church Committee hearings and internal FBI documents revealed that more than one quarter of all active Klan members during the period were FBI agents or informants.  However, Bureau intelligence "assets" were neither neutral observers nor objective investigators, but active participants in beatings, bombings and murders that claimed the lives of some 50 civil rights activists by 1964.
    Bureau spies were elected to top leadership posts in at least half of all Klan units.  Needless to say, the informants gained positions of organizational trust on the basis of promoting the Klan's fascist agenda. Incitement to violence and participation in terrorist acts would only confirm the infiltrator's loyalty and commitment. 
    Unlike slick Hollywood popularizations of the period, such as Alan Parker's film, "Mississippi Burning," the FBI was instrumental in building the Ku Klux Klan in the South COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story By Paul Wolf 

Virtually every known AIM leader in the United States has been incarcerated in either state or federal prisons since (or even before) the organization's formal emergence in 1968, some repeatedly. After the 1973 siege of Wounded Knee the FBI caused 542 separate charges to be filed against those it identified as "key AIM leaders." This resulted in 15 convictions, all on such petty or contrived offenses as "interfering with a federal officer in the performance of his duty." Russell Means was faced with 37 felony and three misdemeanor charges, none of which held up in court. Organization members often languished in jail for months as the cumulative bail required to free them outstripped resource capabilities of AIM and supporting groups. COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story By Paul Wolf 

Most people, when they think of the FBI, have an image from movies like Mississippi Burning and characters like Clarice Sterling from Silence of the Lambs. The media image of the CIA and NSA is much more sinister, but most people think of the FBI purely as a crime fighting organization. 
    The FBI has been very successful at disrupting and destroying perfectly legitimate organizations involved in dissent  - They would like to project the image of crime fighters, but it is not really their principal role. 
......What they have been very successful at is disrupting and destroying perfectly legitimate organizations involved in dissent: civil right organizations, women's organizations, generally organizations on the left. So while they would like to project the image of crime fighters, it is not really the principal role of the FBI.  [Interview] Jim Vander Wall

In many ways, the stark unwillingness of the federal government to accord Leonard Peltier even a modicum of elementary justice is symbolic of the entire AIM experience during the 1970s and, more broadly posed, of the U.S. relationship to American Indians since the first moment of the republic. The message embedded, not only in Peltier's imprisonment, but in the scores of murders, hundreds of shootings and beatings, endless show trials and all the rest of the systematic terrorization marking the FBI's anti-AIM campaign on Pine Ridge, was that the Bureau could and would make it cost-prohibitive for Indians to seriously challenge the lot assigned them by policy-makers and economic planners in Washington, D.C. The internal colonization of Native America is intended to be absolute and unequivocal. 
.......In 1953, just prior to the passage of PL-280, Felix Cohen, one of the foremost scholars of Indian law compared the role of the Indians in America to that of the Jews in modem Germany. He noted that, "Like the miner's canary, the Indian marks the shift from fresh air to poison air in our political atmosphere ... our treatment of Indians, even more than our treatment of other minorities, reflects the rise and fall of our democratic faith." ²¹³ Given that all that happened on and around Pine Ridge occurred long after COINTELPRO allegedly became no more than a "regrettable historical anomaly," ²¹⁴ Cohen's insight holds particular significance for all Americans. In essence, if we may ascertain that COINTELPRO remained alive and well years after it was supposed to have died, we may assume it lives on today. And that, to be sure, is a danger to the lives and liberties of everyone. [1990] The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret War Against Domestic Dissent by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall.

COINTELPRO was an acronym that the FBI had for its counter intelligence programs. Now normal counter intelligence is something carried out by most intelligence organizations and it basically means looking for spies in your own organization or looking for spies in the populace as a whole. So counter intelligence in its normal parlance would mean activities designed to detect and combat espionage. Within the FBI, it was actually a code word for their programs to infiltrate and disrupt legitimate legal organizations engaged in activities that the government found objectionable.   It can range simply from sowing dissent within the organization to, at the other extreme, assassination of the leadership of the organization or the framing of key personnel in the organization on bogus criminal charges and supporting those with fabricated evidence to obtain convictions.  [Interview] Jim Vander Wall

Officially, it ended in 1973, but what apparently ended was the use of the term COINTELPRO, because the same sort of activities were conducted against the American Indian movement by the same personnel in the period from 1973 to 1977, for example.  [Interview] Jim Vander Wall

So that if you're talking about first oil in Oklahoma, and then low-sulfur coal and uranium in the West, those mineral deposits lay principally on the lands of indigenous people. This led to an outright war on the Pine Ridge Reservation with a group called the Goons, being sponsored by the FBI and the U.S. government and the American Indian movement and local organizations like the Independent Oglala Nation supporting native sovereignty and traditional ways of life. 
    During the period from 1973 to 1975, at least 60 people were killed by the Goon squads on the Pine Ridge Reservation, and I say at least because these are reported homicides. It is probably much larger than that because the agency to which you would report a homicide was the FBI, who were of course sponsoring the people committing the homicides. So a lot of assaults and murders went unreported. On June 25, 1975, the FBI went on to a property called the Jumping Bull Compound on Pine Ridge supposedly looking for Jimmy Eagle, who was a young Native American man, on charges of having stolen a pair of cowboy boots. 
    The real reason for them being there was that there was an AIM encampment there and when they encountered people from the encampment, a firefight ensued and the two FBI agents who went in - Ron Williams and Jack Coler were killed in the firefight, as well as AIM member, Joseph Stuntz. Leonard Peltier wound up being framed for those murders and when I say framed, I mean that the FBI coerced witnesses and fabricated evidence in order to obtain a conviction.
.....Peltier has now been down in federal prisons since 1976 on bogus charges and fabricated evidence.  [Interview] Jim Vander Wall

One of the other operations the FBI was into was people working for social justice in Central America in the 80s. I was working with a group who was helping mainly Salvadoran and Nicaraguan refugees find jobs in the Bay Area and I remember our offices being broken into with nothing being taken… Later, I found that seemed to be happening across the country with similar groups. 
    Basically what we had going on was the U.S. supporting a massive terrorist campaign against the people of El Salvador. And I mean terrorism in the very specific narrowly defined sense of the word. We're talking about tens of thousands of political murders, torture and so on. Rather than investigate the supporters of this terrorism in the U.S., the FBI of course investigated those people who opposed this terrorism and then tried to help the victims of it. They did this by infiltrating the organizations, attempting to indict people on immigration charges simply for helping political refugees from terror that was being sponsored by the United States.  [Interview] Jim Vander Wall

The FBI and its allies waged all-out war on AIM and the Native people. From 1973-76, they killed 69 residents of the tiny Pine Ridge reservation, a rate of political murder comparable to the first years of the Pinochet regime in Chile. To justify such a reign of terror and undercut public protest against it, the Bureau launched a complementary program of psychological warfare. [1999] WAR AT HOME by Brian Glick

Within months of taking office, Reagan pardoned W. Mark Felt and Edward S. Miller, the only FBI officials convicted of COINTELPRO crimes. His congressional allies publicly honored these criminals and praised their work. The President continually revived the tired old Red Scare, adding a new "terrorist" bogeyman, while Attorney General Meese campaigned to narrow the scope of the Bill of Rights and limit judicial review of the constitutionality of government action. [1999] WAR AT HOME by Brian Glick

Harassment, intimidation and violence: Eviction, job loss, break-ins, vandalism, grand jury subpoenas, false arrests, frame- ups, and physical violence were threatened, instigated or directly employed, in an effort to frighten activists and disrupt their movements. Government agents either concealed their involvement or fabricated a legal pretext. In the case of the Black and Native American movements, these assaults--including outright political assassinations--were so extensive and vicious that they amounted to terrorism on the part of the government. COINTELPRO Revisited - Spying & Disruption By Brian Glick

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Cross Posted: 

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2506125/data-security/60-minute-security-makeover--prevent-your-own--epic-hack-.html

60-minute security makeover: Prevent your own 'epic hack'

How's this for a digital nightmare? Your Twitter account hijacked; racist and homophobic tweets posted in your name. Your Apple account breached; data wiped from your iPhone, iPad and Mac laptop. Your Gmail password reset by hackers and your Google account deleted.

That's what happened to Wired journalist Mat Honan recently. And while news coverage of his "epic hack" may be easing, you can bet there's an army of would-be imitators who, as you read this, are trying to duplicate that attack. 

Honan was somewhat careless (especially having no backups of his wiped data) but also very unlucky. However, now that word of the attack has been widely publicized, it would be wise to try to protect yourself from these now well-known vulnerabilities.

The good news? It won't take long. And while you can't expect to create an impenetrable defense in an hour, you can implement some strategies to harden your own accounts.

Issue: Using public email addresses for account access, password recovery

Threat: It's hard to believe that attackers only needed Honan's email address to kick off the process of hijacking his Twitter and Apple accounts. But the attackers did indeed start with only Honan's Gmail address and billing address (available in many public records) to leverage lax security policies at Amazon and Apple and access his accounts. 

Defense: Don't use a publicly known email address for your account login and password-reset contact info. Instead, use one or more separate addresses that you reserve only for this use and not for any other type of communication. This makes it harder for someone who knows your personal or business email address to use that information to gain access to other accounts.

Your ISP likely allows you to add additional email accounts. Alternatively, you can use an email service you trust to create a new account, or you can register your own domain and add a hard-to-guess email address (which you should not use as the contact address for that domain). 

Really security conscious? Set up multiple email addresses so you've got different ones per account, or have multiple addresses that forward to one private box. This way, even if one account is breached, it won't help anyone gain access to another by knowing the email address you use there. 

Bonus: People trolling for information about you will have less success overall.

Time: Setting up a new address at your ISP or domain: 3-5 minutes. Setting up multiple forwarders to that address: another 3-5 minutes. Changing login/contact/password reset email address: 1-2 minutes per account. Suggestion: It will probably feel less onerous if you change contact addresses the next time you log into each of your accounts, instead of sitting down to do them all at once. (story continues on next page)

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The paranoid's survival guide, part 3: Opting out, and how to protect your personal data offline

You have more control over your privacy than you think. While it's true that you can't control absolutely everything that's out there about you, with a little work you can exert more control than you might expect over what's gathered, its accuracy and how it may be used, say privacy experts.

Computerworld asked nine privacy professionals to share their best tips for minimizing your online and offline data footprint.

Part 1 of this series covered how to maintain your online privacy and surf the Web without leaving a data trail. Part 2offered advice on how to approach social media, messaging and some general rules you should follow when using mobile apps. (For more tips, also see our "60-minute security makeover: Prevent your own epic hack.")

In this last installment we cover best practices to lower your offline data footprint, and where to go to opt out of everything from direct mail offers to online behavioral advertising.

Offline safety tips

Use cash or disposable credit cards

If you prefer keeping what you purchase to yourself, consider using cash for most transactions, including at restaurants, bars and retail stores. "When you use a credit card, your bank knows what you bought, and the merchant has a way to track you over time," says Justin Brookman, director of consumer privacy at the Center for Democracy and Technology.

"Using cash really does wonders to minimize how much your footprint is being automatically tracked," says Rob Shavell, co-founder and CEO at privacy software vendor Abine -- and you don't have to worry about having your card data stolen from a retailer's point of sale system.

Another option, especially for online purchases, is to use disposable credit card numbers, says Brookman. For example, Abine's MaskMe service provides a one-time use credit card number that hides your real number from the vendor -- which means it can't be added to a customer profile or stolen from their database.

On the other hand, Brookman advises, don't bother with those rechargeable cards from retailers. "If you use the same rechargeable card over time, you have some of the same problems as credit cards -- you can be tracked by unique number by the retailer over time," a privacy issue, and the number "could be compromised and used by identity thieves," which represents a securityproblem. "I'd use cash over a rechargeable gift card," he says.

Check your credit report annually

Monitor your credit report for any suspicious activity by ordering free credit reports at Annualcreditreport.com, and challenge incorrect data. You're entitled to a free report from Equifax, Experian and TransUnion every 12 months.

Consider a permanent security freeze

A permanent security freeze puts your credit report under your control: No one can access it to open up new credit accounts in your name without your permission. Businesses cannot access your credit report unless you unlock it, and identity thieves can't set up new credit accounts in your name unless they can present the credentials required to unlock it. Equifax, Experian and TransUnion are required by law to allow consumers to place a permanent security freeze on their credit reports.

There may be charge to set up the service, depending on your state of residence, as well as a charge to temporarily unlock your credit report for an authorized lender. Pros: The option is much less expensive than credit monitoring services. Cons: The credit reporting agencies make the process for unlocking/locking your credit report cumbersome and, except in states where prohibited by law, they charge you a fee -- generally in the range of $10 -- every time you make a lock or unlock request.

Know your options for opting out

Direct mail and email offers

Visit the Direct Marketing Association's DMAchoice website to opt out of mail and email direct marketing from the DMA's approximately 3,600 member organizations. You must individually choose to opt out four distinct categories of direct mail: Catalogs, magazine offers, credit offers and other mail offers. There's no global opt-out option.

You're asked to fill out a form with your personal information, including your social security number and date of birth. Unfortunately, the opt-out choice is only good for five years when you sign up online. To opt out permanently, you must mail in your request.

Telephone solicitors

Use the Federal Trade Commission's Do Not Call Registry to opt out of receiving telemarketer calls and report violators. There are loopholes for politicians and nonprofits, and some offshore operators continue to flout the law. But your volume of unwanted solicitation calls should go down.

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Online behavioral advertising

The Digital Advertising Alliance's Ad Choices site and Network Advertising Initiative's Consumer Opt Out page both describe how interest-based advertising works and let you choose to opt out of behavioral online advertising and the online tracking associated with it. Go through the opt-out process on either site and your request will be honored by 118 ad agencies, ad networks and other DAA members.

When you visit these pages you'll see which DAA members are currently tracking you. From there you can selectively opt out, or click a button to opt out of interest-based advertising from all DAA members. When you opt out you will still see advertisements on the websites you visit, but you will no longer receive advertisements based on what the ad networks know about your Web activity -- and your activity online will no longer be tracked.

"The DAA Principles prohibit the collection of browsing behavior once a consumer has opted out, unless the entity requires that information for one of the DAA's limited exceptions, such as fraud prevention or ad reporting," says Mike Zaneis, senior vice president and general counsel with the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a trade group that represents publishers and ad sellers.

There are some limitations to the process, however. During the opt-out process, the site places a cookie in your browser to maintain your preferences, and it prompts you to download a browser extension that will maintain your preferences even if you clear out the cookies in your browser. "We have made the easiest consumer experience possible given the current state of technology," Zaneis says. But because your preferences are tied to your browser, you'll need to go through the opt-out process for every browser on every computer you use.

And don't forget to set a calendar reminder when you're done: Your choice must be renewed every five years.

Alternately, you can achieve similar results by configuring your browser to block third-party cookies. Using an anti-tracking browser add-on has a similar effect. The difference is that you'll still receive non-targeted ads if you block third-party cookies, but you'll get nothing at all if you block tracking, since communication with the third-party ad networks is disrupted. (While you may not like them, those ads do pay for the free apps and content that Web publishers offer you.)

Online public records databases

Aggregators such as Intellius pull information from telephone directories, sex offender registries, court records, real estate transactions and other public data, combine it into a profile, and make the information about you available online -- both free, for people searches, and fee-based, for background checks. The data comes from many different sources, and it's not always combined correctly, which can lead to the dissemination of erroneous information about you -- particularly if you have a common name.

Some services, such as WhitePages.com, let you claim your identity and update it online if you register with them. But you can also opt out of having your information listed. Security vendor Abine provides a list of opt-out pages for the most popular data-aggregation services, including Intellius.

Use a service to monitor what's out there about you

-- and remove it

It's time consuming to go to every data broker and opt out of having them list or share your name, address, telephone number and other personal information. Alternately, consider using a third-party service such as SafeShepherd, Reputation Defender or DeleteMe to monitor public databases and do the work for you. These fee- or subscription-based services ask to have your information removed, but then continue to watch to make sure your information doesn't pop up again as the data brokers continuously pull in new information.

It's not just about opting out, however, but also pushing down negative information in search-engine rankings by careful editing of your Facebook and LinkedIn profiles. "You have a right to determine what is out there about you," says Jules Polonetsky, executive director of the Future of Privacy Forum. "Shaping who you are and being seen on your terms, that's brand management for today's world."

The Paranoid's survival guide: Protect your privacy on social, mobile and more

The paranopid's survival guide, part 2: Protect your privacy on social, mobile and more

by ROBERT L. MITCHELL | MARCH 13, 2014

Is privacy dead? Not by a long shot. While you can't control everything that's out there about you, there's quite a bit you can do to reduce your data footprint -- or at least avoid adding to it. For this series, Computerworld asked nine privacy experts for tips and tricks they use for keeping their own personal data profiles on the down low.

Whether your goal is avoiding tracking by marketers, ensuring your personal safety or protecting yourself from government surveillance, there are steps you can take to minimize your exposure both online and off, these professionals say.

Part 1 of this series covered how to maintain your online privacy and surf the Web without leaving a data trail. Here, in part 2, we offer advice on how to approach social media, messaging and some general rules you should follow when using mobile apps. Part 3 covers how to minimize your offline data footprint, and where to go to opt out. (For more tips, also see our "60-minute security makeover: Prevent your own epic hack.")

3 ways to shape up your social media

Don't sign up for a new service using Facebook or another social networking account

When a website tells you it's easier to register for its service using your Facebook account, what they really mean is that it's easier for them to pull all available information about you from that site and use it to build a profile on you, says Rob Shavell, co-founder and CEO at privacy software vendor Abine. Always choose the "sign up with email" option, and don't use the same email address you use for Facebook or other social media accounts.

Lock down those social network privacy settings

Review and set the privacy settings for every online service you use, and revisit those policies regularly to update them, as the services tend to change their policies frequently, says Jules Polonetsky, executive director of the Future of Privacy Forum. "Make sure you lock down the settings in every social media profile, and test it to see what others can see about you," he suggests.

Think before you post

On social networks nothing is truly private. "Be aware when you post with whom you are sharing," says Sid Stamm, senior engineering manager for security and privacy at Mozilla. What you post can be used against you, either now or in the future -- by snooping government agencies, political operatives, potential employers or online marketers that want to serve up interest-based advertising.

Even when you delete a post it's likely to persist. Your "friends" can copy/paste anything visible to them into other sites or email messages. And with Twitter your posts are part of the public data feed that's routinely captured by data brokers and others interested in analyzing that data. "The act of deleting just means removing the visibility on Twitter," says Robert Hansen, a security researcher and director of product management at the website-security vendor WhiteHat Security. But every data broker or other organization that has consumed your Twitter feed between the time you posted and the time you deleted the message still has the data.

Don't post photos of your kids, your interests or when you'll be going on vacation, he adds. "If it's something I even briefly pause about, I don't put it on social networks. Treat everything in social networks as adversarial, and then you don't have to worry about it."

Online job sites and online dating sites are the two areas where people give up way too much information about themselves, says Casey Oppenheim, co-CEO at anti-tracking software vendor Disconnect. "Your name, address, where you went to school -- all of that information about you can be used to answer challenge questions," he says. Online dating sites may use questionnaires to collect extensive psychological and demographic data in an effort to build very detailed profiles that may be retained even after you close your account.

Page 2 of 3

Manage your messaging

Secure your email

Be sure to enable HTTPS encryption for all email communications in transit. As for email data in your inbox, a hosted private email service that you pay for, from a company such as Rackspace, offers more privacy than does a free, public Webmail service such as Gmail, while hosting your own email server on premises offers the most privacy of all.

There are many exploits out there for compromising Webmail services, says Hansen. What's more, the content of email hosted on free Webmail services may be used to allow advertisers to send interest-based advertising. Also, government agencies can access your data on Webmail or hosted email systems at any time by simply presenting a subpoena -- and the provider may be prohibited from telling you about it. With an internally hosted server, a search warrant would be required, and you would be aware of the action.

Use a privacy-oriented email service

Popular Webmail services such as Gmail and Yahoo Mail offer a free account in exchange for collecting data about you and analyzing your email activity for marketing purposes. If that bothers you, consider a free service not supported by advertising, such as Zoho Mail, or use an email account provided by your ISP.

For even greater protection, use a secure email service that's dedicated to protecting your privacy, such as Riseup or MyKolab. Services like MyKolab, which hosts your email data offshore and out of reach of the Patriot Act, may make your data less prone to U.S. government snooping.

Use a self-destructing text/chat service

Instant messaging/texting services that encrypt your communications and don't retain your chat history have gained critical mass among young people, and for good reason, says Polonestky. "No one records [verbal] chit-chat, but when I have that conversation online it's somehow part of the national archives. It shouldn't be. It's the kind of communication that should work as a shout out and be fleeting," he says.

Polonestky uses Frankly Chat, which he calls "Snapchat for adults," but says other popular services including Snapchat itself or Whisper also work well. Whisper is an anonymous social network, and Snapchat allows users to set time limits for how long their posts will appear.

Oppenheim recommends Silent Text and TextSecure. The downside of these services is that the person you want to message must have the same app installed and running before you can connect. So, depending on which service your friends use, you might need to keep more than one app running.

Mobile protections

Limit tracking on your mobile phone

Mobile phones offer more limited options for minimizing your online footprint, says Justin Brookman, director, consumer privacy at the Center for Democracy & Technology. Your carrier knows your location, the calls you make, the sites you visit, the texts you've sent and received and the apps you use. Unless you turn off your phone, your carrier will always know where you are, he says. And while you can't opt of out all data collection, your carrier may offer options that let you limit how it uses and shares that data.

Password-protect your smartphones, tablets and other personal computing devices, and configure the "find me" feature or app for mobile devices. "The first thing to do is to make sure that if you ever lost the device you can get it back and lock it down. This is half security, half privacy," says Chris Babel, CEO at security vendor Truste.

Page 3 of 3

Use a password manager and two-factor authentication

Password managers not only keep track of your online user names and passwords and generate strong passwords, Babel says, but most also have an auto-fill feature that protects your account credentials from key logger malware that may be watching you. (It's especially important to use a strong password for your email account, since it contains a trove of personal information about you, and most online accounts use your email address to allow you to reset forgotten passwords.)

If you already use a password manager -- either on your desktop as a standalone app or in your browser -- check to see if it has a mobile component. Many do.

For additional protection, consider a password manager such as LastPass that supports two-factor authentication. Even if someone guesses your master password they still won't be able to get at your password database without physical access to your device.

Don't share your location information

"You can control who you give location permission to on most mobile devices, but you can't control" with which other apps are given that data. "So choose carefully," says Brookman. Social media updates that include location data also tell people where you are -- and where you aren't. Do you really want everyone on Twitter, or all of your Facebook friends -- and friends of friends -- to know? "Don't turn on location services unless you really need it," says Oppenheim. And turn it off when you're done.

Turn off your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to avoid retail tracking

Today you walk into a store and the retailer doesn't know much about you. "But stores are installing listening devices to detect mobile phones with Wi-Fi turned on that are actively looking for access points," says Brookman. Before long, it won't just be your mobile carrier and mobile apps that know where you are at all times. Retailers and other businesses want to use the combination of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi signals emanating from your smartphone to track you when you enter a store or other place of business.

"When I walk into the mall they will know I've entered because my device is pinging Wi-Fi. And with Bluetooth they can track me within 30 to 50 feet. They know where I'm walking," says Babel. When your phone queries the store's wireless router to search for connectivity option, the business captures the unique MAC address associated with your phone's Wi-Fi hardware. If you then make a purchase, your MAC address can be combined with other information the store has to identify you. Some consumers might want to announce themselves, Babel says, because they're hoping to receive special offers on their smartphones. But if you're paranoid, says Brookman, turning off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth solves the problem.

If you can't be bothered to toggle those services off every time you leave your home or office, anti-virus software vendor AVG recently rolled out a service called PrivacyFix that automatically turns off your mobile Wi-Fi if the network you're passing by isn't on your whitelist. Mobile apps like Tasker for Android can be configured to use a technique called "geofencing" to turn off Wi-Fi when you leave your home or office and turn it back on when you return.

Soon you may have another option: The Future of Privacy Forum is in the process of creating a service called Do Not Track My Mac -- to be hosted at smartstoreprivacy.org -- that will let users opt out of tracking by retailers that want to capture your smartphone's Ethernet MAC address.

The companies agree not to capture your name or link your information to your MAC address unless you opt in, says Polonetsky. However, they can still track your MAC address anonymously unless you opt out. The data is used for general analysis purposes, such as to determine the average wait time in cashier lines, for example, or to study how traffic moves through the store. So far, 10 companies have signed on, Polonetsky says.

Next: How to minimize your offline data footprint, and where to go to opt out.

This article, The paranoid's online survival guide, part 2: How to protect your personal data, was originally published at Computerworld.com.

^ed 

Sent via iPhone

You're not as anonymous as you think!

Details about the data that gets deleted

The following information is associated with each type of browsing data and applies to Google Chrome on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome OS.

• Browsing history: Clearing your browsing history specifically deletes the following:
  • Web addresses you've visited from the History page
  • Cached text of those pages
  • Snapshots of those pages for images that appear on the New Tab page
  • Any IP addresses pre-fetched from those pages
• Download history: The list of files you've downloaded using Google Chrome is cleared, but the actual files are not removed from your computer.
• Cookies, site, and plug-in data:
  • Cookies: Files stored on your computer by websites you've visited. These files contain user information, such as preferences for websites or profile information.
  • Site data: HTML5 enabled storage types including application caches, Web Storage data, Web SQL Database data, and Indexed Database data.
  • Plug-in data: Any client-side data stored by plug-ins that use the NPAPI ClearSiteData API.
• Cache: Text of webpages you've visited in Google Chrome is removed from your computer. Browsers store elements of webpages to speed up the loading of the webpage during your next visit.
• Passwords: Records of usernames and passwords are deleted. If you're using a Mac, your password records are deleted from Keychain Access.
• Form data: All your Autofill entries and records of text you've entered on web forms are deleted.
• Clear data from hosted apps: Data from the apps you’ve added to Chrome from the Chrome Web Store will be erased, such as the local storage used by Gmail Offline.
• Deauthorize content licenses: This will prevent Flash Player from playing any previously viewed protected content, such as movies or music that you’ve purchased. It’s recommended to deauthorize content licenses before selling or donating your computer.

CyberStalking: SIX years and counting.

Mike Damann @Firetown aka @trevorspeaks have been staking, harassing d0xing, stealing my intellectual property since June of 2010. 

I have done everything in my paper to make them cease and desist posting on forums @infosecisland and FaceBook requesting that they remove my personal information and slanderous comments and false allegations from their respective websites. 

After five years of relentless harassment and horrific gang stalking on birthdays and holidays, I filed a report with @ICANN and notified the FBI that they were actively working with people who were deported from the United States and taken into custody on 9/11 for their ties to anti-American terrorist cells.

After receiving my detailed report and analysis of Jude Vosika's site that not only d0xed my father but plagiarized a considerable about of original content that I wrote for several freelance publications. 

Jude's response was hardly rational since she called the police and hired @JasonBWhitman to secure her ridiculous website during Thanksgiving 2010. She made false allegations to the police, on hers and other websites including my Wordpress site where she logged in under the name Vaxen Var who is a dear friend of mine that has supported me despite the mental heath problems and severe depression that was the direct result of constant, prolonged threats against my family, my cat and myself.

It has been nearly six years since they started stalking me and though I feel 110% better with the help of expensive medication to keep me from taking my own life, I will never be the same beautiful, carefree, professional academic that I was before she and her friends targeted me for reasons unknown. 

As amazing as it seems, both Jude Vosika, Mike Damann (@Firetown @rockingjude @trevorspeaks) are still staking and harassing me and my friends online and in real life. I noticed that Mike had been tweeting at me a few weeks ago and then started following every person with a public account who speaks with me and I received several notifications that my various accounts have been locked for security reason and for multiple attempts to login unusual locations. 

Give that they have historically attacked me on birthdays and holidays it seems more than likely that Jude and Mike are the offending criminals. 

It worth noting that Jude went into hacker forums begging some of the most infamous and nefarious hackers of our time. 

Having said that, I was not neatly as devastated or horrified when I saw seven new posts in pastebin 

a few days ago.

And that the DailyDDoSe for November 22, 2014. 

Just me, e 

@ELyssaD

Mike Damann @Firetown aka @trevorspeaks have been staking, harassing d0xing, stealing my intellectual property since June of 2010. 

I have done everything in my paper to make them cease and desist posting on forums @infosecisland and FaceBook requesting that they remove my personal information and slanderous comments and false allegations from their respective websites. 

After five years of relentless harassment and horrific gang stalking on birthdays and holidays, I filed a report with @ICANN and notified the FBI that they were actively working with people who were deported from the United States and taken into custody on 9/11 for their ties to anti-American terrorist cells.

After receiving my detailed report and analysis of Jude Vosika's site that not only d0xed my father but plagiarized a considerable about of original content that I wrote for several freelance publications. 

Jude's response was hardly rational since she called the police and hired @JasonBWhitman to secure her ridiculous website during Thanksgiving 2010. She made false allegations to the police, on hers and other websites including my Wordpress site where she logged in under the name Vaxen Var who is a dear friend of mine that has supported me despite the mental heath problems and severe depression that was the direct result of constant, prolonged threats against my family, my cat and myself.

It has been nearly six years since they started stalking me and though I feel 110% better with the help of expensive medication to keep me from taking my own life, I will never be the same beautiful, carefree, professional academic that I was before she and her friends targeted me for reasons unknown. 

As amazing as it seems, both Jude Vosika, Mike Damann (@Firetown @rockingjude @trevorspeaks) are still staking and harassing me and my friends online and in real life. I noticed that Mike had been tweeting at me a few weeks ago and then started following every person with a public account who speaks with me and I received several notifications that my various accounts have been locked for security reason and for multiple attempts to login unusual locations. 

Give that they have historically attacked me on birthdays and holidays it seems more than likely that Jude and Mike are the offending criminals. 

It worth noting that Jude went into hacker forums begging some of the most infamous and nefarious hackers of our time. 

Having said that, I was not neatly as devastated or horrified when I saw seven new posts in pastebin 

a few days ago.

And that the DailyDDoSe for November 22, 2015. 

Just me, e

@ElyssaD

^ed 

Back in Pastebin October 29, 2015

http://pastebin.com/download.php?i=LMgeCzc5

I started this private site after my name, ID, medical and financial info was stolen, made public in Pastebin, and sold on T-shirts at the DefCon hackers conference. I never got one penny for the T-shirts and apparel sold and was never reimbursed for the damage done to my computer equipment and mobile devices as a result of HARD CORE hackers. I was promised the T-shirts and promo ads would be pulled from the event and the black hat hackers known as Lulz, AntiSec, (Sabu and Co.) would take them down and refrain from using my likeness for promotional purposes. They were not. They used my name, my likeness, my photos, my social security number, my ID, my address and more to create a slew of fake social media accounts to post insane bullshit across a variety of platforms. They even socially engineered my closest friends and family members in various forums to reinforce the charade. They claimed the T-shirts were for charity and that $1.00 would be donated for every ELyssaD garment sold. Not only did I not receive any such monies, I am quite certain these wits have no idea how serious it is to impersonate a 501(c)3. So not only did they make a profit from exploiting every aspect of my life, they harassed my friends, impersonated an ex-cop who has been one of most trusted allies and confidant; threatened friends who dare to speak up on my behalf by calling them on the phone and identifying themselves as law enforcement. ANOTHER felony. They made a profit. They offered a reward for tittie pics, had podcasts, comic books and sold a line of women's apparel to promote their podcasts, show and of course, make money. They created multiple fake identities on various social media platforms. They pwned my website, social media accounts, linked in, private forums, etc... harassed my friends and posted my fathers home address on the internet. They altered personal documents they stole from my private files, altered them, and had the nerve to put the FAKE documents back in to my web albums and made them public. ONE LOGIN = ONE FELONY Destruction of evidence (especially records that pertain to employee benefits is a whole other class of crimes) These individuals are clearly guilty, and have no problem advertising their skills across the hacker community. They destroyed my professional credibility with disinformation writing posting ridiculous website entries that present my professional certifications as a practicing therapist to make them appear as if I was the patient not the provider. 65 "people" impersonating me on social media platforms? My friends, sister, brothers, my mother, and even "Agent Daddy" became targets as well. I started this site hoping for a do-over. My name is ELyssa. ELyssaD and, for he record I've never done midget porn!

I didn't see this one coming. 

^ed 

Sent via iPhone