For five dollars a month, you can get what its maker hopes will be a better guard against your personal information going where you don't want it while you surf the Internet.
Privada says its new Web Incognito software will let you personalize the Web sites you normally visit to accept cookies while storing them on a remote server.
The company also says Web Incognito will keep information such as where you live (town and street address), your Internet address, and your operating system, from ever going over the Net without being encrypted, whereas most other available services allow such information to go forth.
CNET says Net privacy is a more acute concern now than even a year ago. Congress and the Federal Trade Commission have already threatened to take government action unless private industry does a better job ensuring Net privacy, while Microsoft and IBM have already said they'll pull advertising from Web sites which do not post privacy protection policies.
Until now, CNET says, people who wanted to keep Web sites from collecting private information had to resort to proxy sites. But their disadvantage, CNET says, is that they cannot accept cookies, typically, with cookies being "useful for eliminating the hassle of repeatedly entering passwords.
Web Incognito will use software living on a user's computer to encrypt identifying information before it gets out onto the Internet. Those Web sites which collect visitor information will see nothing but a Privada protocol address to which the software connects, says the company.
Privada's server also buffers between visitor and Web site, storing those cookies the user wants to accept - letting you personalize Web pages from different computers since cookies are no longer stored on a single machine.
For now, CNET says, Web Incognito only runs on Windows and Solaris systems, and while individuals will pay $5 a month for the service, businesses and Internet service providers wanting to offer it to subscribers will pay a $25,000 installation fee plus annual fees.
