What Tools Can I Use to Protect My Privacy Online?

[gravenewworld]

What are some things you can download, websites you can use, etc. that can help protect your privacy online? Obviously, nothing is 100% foolproof, but at least you can try to protect yourself online. Currently I only use startpage.com as my search engine and stay away from google as much as I can. I also use Iron web browser. I was also thinking about downloading Tor and maybe Scroogle. Does anyone have any experience with these? Does it interfere a lot with web browsing? What are some other things I can use?

 

[fss]

Tor is only an IP anonymizer. It slows your browsing speed considerably.

No search engine is better than any other. They all keep the same kind of statistics and information.

If you want to protect your identity, close all your social networking accounts. Use PGP for your e-mail. Never use your credit card or identifying information online.

Privacy on the web in the realistic sense doesn't exist. Since nothing you put on the web (as far as facebook posts, blog posts, purchases, etc) never really goes away, all you can do at this point is damage control.

 

[dr2011]

Currently I only use startpage.com as my search engine and stay away from google as much as I can.

Curious to know why you stay away from Google...?

 

[Dude111]

Yes but using something like https://ssl.scroogle.org IS AN EXCELLENT START! (No tracking of searches,etc)