I am considering enrolling in a new internet provider which charges only $16.95 a month if I prepay for a year. So I go to the website to sign up and they not only ask my name and address and credit card numer, they also want my social security number, driver's license number, birth date, and mother's maiden name. These are required fields and they say this is to verify my identity. Then I read the user agreement and it has all kinds of language about how they are immune from liability for anything transmitted or stored in their servers. I have had two other internet providers, my current provider is AOL - which only requires your name and billing information. Is it legal or ethical for this private business to ask all these questions? It is based in Texas. It is a major provider and I wonder if the information has the potential to be misused.
RE: Do they need to know all t The information that they requested are the traditional means of identification. They are just trying to prevent fraud. Your SSN and your DOB are in the header of your credit file. I would certainly feel uncomfortable about forking over this information on the internet. I would suggest that you try to do the transaction over the phone where you can speak to a real live person and object when they request this information. Doing it over a toll-free number affords the business a measure of protection as they capture the phone number you called from through ANI (Automatic Number Identification) which is not blocked if you block your number from being delivered to caller ID. I would think that on the phone they would be happy with taking the transaction if you provide a name, address and telephone number that correspond with the billing information the credit card company has.
RE: Do they need to know all t Why pay for the internet? I was paying $19.95 a month but I found several free providers who are just as good. Excite, Net Zero, and Blue Light are just a few that I have had good luck with. I wouldn't give them the information they are asking for. Thats to much info for something you are paying upfront for.
RE: Do they need to know all t Those 'free' internet services are fine as long as you don't mind the omnipresent advertizing bar on the screen and having your every click on the internet tracked, cataloged, analyzed, and sold to privacy invading marketing companies.
RE: Do they need to know all t The hell with the ad bars on free internet programs, I use FreeI net, and never see a bar, because I log on via Internet Explorer,and modify the dial up properties to dial into their server with my password, I have done this for 5 months now, and I never see an ad once...let me know if you want specifics on this.
RE: Do they need to know all t Well first of all, you have to download the FreeInet software and install it and let it set up an account (www.freeinet.net) I believe that is the correct URL, then you launch internet explorer, click on the "E" next to the start button, then go to Tools, internet options, connections, then click on Add, then fill out the form, make sure the connection you add is called FreeINetworks, then when that is added, click on that connection. it should be the 2nd or 3rd one, depending if you have AOL installed, then click on settings when the freeinetworks connection is selected, go to dial up settings and put in your freeinet username, it should be something like this "mysticspirit25@md.freei.net", then put your password in the password box, then click ok, then click on properties box, then make sure you put the connection phone number in there to dial into, you'll get this when you start up your account from freei...then go to the tabs at the top of the window, and click on the one that says server type,and make sure only the following are selected, PPP:Internet, Windows NT Server, Windows 98, enable software compression, and TCP/IP, all others should be unchecked. You're almost done, back on the connections menu, click on the freeinetworks connection, and click on "set default" and click apply,restart the computer, and when you launch internet explorer, it will come up with a box saying connect, click on connect, and you'll be on, no ads' nothing, the only drawback, is you cant use their email service, but who cares, when there are thousands of free email servers. I use hotmail...the same works with netzero as well....Hope I could be of service.. Arthur
RE: Do they need to know all t That only solves half the problem. They will still collect sites visited information on you from the cookie info. And if you set your browser to not accept cookies, a lot of sites will not let you in. You can trash the "magic cookie" but the browser will immediately start a new one soon as you visit a new site. So, if you visit some sites (like offshore banks) that you don't want others to know about, then trash the cookie soon as you leave (to some neutral site) and when you go back homesite it will look leke the browser was turned on with first site being the neutral site. This can happen for real if your browser is set for open at last site visited, and you do a "spring cleaning" before going back online. An even better way is to delete the magic cookie file, then put in it's place a folder named "magic cookie". This only works with netscape. Int Expl bombs with this trick, just as it bombs when you try to quit IE when a seperate program (like SW Update) is doing a seperate download. Also, if you set IE to do automatic SW updates in the background while you browse, and it starts a download of some SW, you can't stop the download, and you can't find out how long it will be. Since you told it to do it on it's own, big Bill has determined that you don't really need to know what is happening untill it is done and returns control of the machine to you. If this happens to you, just walk away and go to bed. DO NOT PULL THE PLUG TO STOP IT! In particular if you have a DOS box. My son did it and lost IE, and his Windows, and can't get restarted cause the SW CD is back in NJ, and he has no emergency startup disk so he can download Windoze. He are dead in the water. I have done the same thing a few times under diress, but all I get is a nasty note when I start the next time that the computer was not shut down properly. But then I have a Macintosh with OS9 and full memory protection which is one of the things Billy the Gate co has not yet copied frpom Apple. But then Apple started by copying from the Zerox PARC at Stanford Univ, (but they are willing to admit it). So I am loaning my son my old first generation power Mac with my old DOS emulator and MacLink+ DOS - Mac translator program. Turns out my old powerMac (Third fastest of the 6 Macs I prersently own) in DOS emulate mode runs faster than his old 386 Windoze box. So suck on that you Apple bashers with the second fastest desktop or laptop computers.
RE: Do they need to know all t On a PC there is a simpler way of doing this. Netscape keeps all of the cookies in one file called 'cookies.txt' which is the same as the 'Magic Cookie' file on the Mac. In the later versions of Netscape you can have profiles for multiple users so you will have to do this in all of the user folders. Find the 'cookies.txt' file and open it with the Notepad. Delete everything that's in the file. Insert one space character so that the only thing in the file is the space. Close the file. Find the 'cookies.txt' file on the desktop or in Windows Explorer and right click on it and bring up the file properties. Change the cookies.txt file to 'Read-Only'. Click OK. You have now set the cookie file to read-only so that nothing can be written to it. What you have done is made all of the cookies that have been pushed at you 'session cookies'. They are accepted, by only held in memory and not written to disk. So you can log in to your favorite websites and use them, but when you close your browser, all of the cookies are destroyed. During the session, you can clear all of the cookies by simply clearing the memory cache of the browser. This technique will still let you be 'tracked' during your session, but once you trash the cookies, that 'person' will never be seen on the internet again so that information is of little value to marketing snoops.
RE: Do they need to know all t If you install the Cookie Cutter on your system it will delete the cookie as soon as you get out of NS Or IE.No trace left.
