How is personal information taken from PC when visiting safe sites?

Question

Although most trusted vendors claimed their sites are virus-, adware-, spam and spyware-free,
how else can they steal information from us when we try out free PC games and free software (trial version)?

Can they access the history folder of web pages visited or much more?

What software to use to protect a home PC?

Answer 1

There is no such thing as a safe site. There are only intelligent surfers. Sites may claim to be safe, but lets face it nearly everyone collects some sort of information. The claim that they are safe is because the information that they collect is not considered to be Personally Identifiable Information (PII). PII would consist of you name, physical address, age, salary information etc. However, collecting your IP address, processor type, disk size, browser type does not personally identify you. Eitehr way they are still collecting data from you. Whenever you download free ware or use trial ware you are more than likely prompted to supply information and/or are accepting a cookie (little piece of software code that is copied to your PC and collects usage data, such as websites visited)

You must surf smart. Always, always, always read the End User License Agreement (EULA) and/or privacy statement most of which is legal mumbo jumbo but always describes what information is being collected and how that information will be used. If you dont have a warm fuzzy feeling about the site that is collecting your info then "run Forest run". Do not give them any. Always look for the little check boxes that ask for your permissions to send you mail, or share your data with 3rd parties. This is a SPAM flood waiting to happen.

So, like most other things life has to offer, the world, and the Intenet is as safe as you make it.

Answer 2

Safe Sites

Answer 3

The yellow exclamation is a warning that something is not working properly with that audio visual. Try turning off your computer completely, ..with the button .. not with the computer..do it manually. Then before windows safe mode can come up, press f8 and hold it down .. you will hear a lot of clicking, that's not a problem, it's just bypassing windows again...but when it's forced to do that, it should give you more options to turn on windows without safe mode.. even if you have an audio visual conflict/problem, it still should start out of safe mode. good luck

Answer 4

The browser gives them your IP address, which gives them your internet service provider (your ISP shouldn't share your actual identity except to law enforcement). If you're at work, your ISP may be your employer. So don't visit a site from work if you don't want the site to know who you work for.

I believe the browser offers the previous page, so if you got to their page from a link they can tell who's linking to them. The only information they can get from a web browser cookie is information they put there (to identify a repeat visitor). They can also get browser type and version and operating system, maybe a few other things like that.

The only way they can get personal information is if you give it to them or there's spyware on your computer giving it to them. Or they buy the information from someone else.

Answer 5

Phishing - psychological phishers can steal information by knowing people's general psychology when they visit sites. So most often they try to ask people to provide information trying to present themselves as a very safe site / organisation.

Answer 6

possibly if they really do have spyware on their site but it would take a bit because virus software should pick up lower class spywayre easily

Answer 7

ive never had a problem using a software firewall and a good antispyware like ewido ..