We at PrivacyHarbor.com are pleased to announce that we have just released the first edition of our quarterly newsletter.  In it, you will find the latest information about privacy, our PrivacyHarbor.com service and PrivacyHarbor, Inc.

We would love to hear what you think. Please let us know what you like, do not like, and what you would want to see us add next time. We read all comments, and our newsletter, like our service, is built upon your feedback.  If you wish to subscribe, please visit us at PrivacyHarbor.com and then enter your email in the newsletter subscription area of our homepage.

We also invite everyone to visit us at www.PrivacyHarbor.com today, and see how easy it is to send and receive private email. We are your advocate in protecting your Internet communications, and we encourage everyone to take back your privacy with PrivacyHarbor.com.

Over the past six months or so there has been a lot of positive buzz surrounding PrivacyHarbor.com and our private email platform. We are thrilled that tens of thousands of people have subscribed to our service over that short period of time and the feedback has been very positive. With this initial success comes a lot of responsibility, and we are busier than ever listening to your comments and suggestions in order to continually enhance our service.

Our company is all about providing private Internet communications for everyone. By saying “everyone,” we are indeed saying that consumers and small businesses finally have a viable solution for private and secure email. We, and our subscribers, believe that we have created a solution for private email that is easy to use and inexpensive. In fact, we even offer a free, private email account.

So the question remains, why did we build a product for consumers and small businesses where so many others focus on the large Fortune 500 companies? The answer is simple; we believe that privacy is a right, even on the Internet. Most people already expect privacy in all other forms of communications, but may not think it is possible on the Internet. Advertisers, hackers and identity thieves have used this popular assumption to their benefit over the years and, as a result, there are now major problems such as spam, identity theft and unwanted target advertising.

All the major corporations on the Internet, including Google, Yahoo and Facebook make the vast majority of their money through advertising.  Privacy simply gets in the way of their business model, which is based on exploiting user information in order to provide targeted advertisements. At PrivacyHarbor, we have a different business model. We make money the old fashion way, by respecting our subscribers and the people they are communicating with, and by providing a great service. We are in the privacy business – not the advertising business.

We encourage everyone to visit us on www.PrivacyHarbor.com today, try private email and let us know what you think. Our services are being built on your feedback. You now have an advocate to protect your Internet communications and we encourage everyone to take back their privacy with PrivacyHarbor.com.

It’s that time of year when online purchases peak and many people are working with their financial advisers to review the past year and plan for the coming one. The Internet has become a convenient and standard tool for exchanging financial information, and email is now a staple in this online exchange of information. Unfortunately, email is routinely targeted by online scammers, hackers and identity thieves snooping for financial information.

Becoming aware of these online threats is the first step toward reducing your risks online. According to Identity Theft Fixes, each year approximately 10 million Americans become victims to identity theft. Of these individuals, an average of $1,800 to $14,000 is lost. Moreover, victims spend an average of 840 to 1,300 hours each year to resolve identity theft issues with their credit report and personal information.

Here are five steps you can take to help ensure your financial information is protected:

1) Keep security software active and up-to-date. Anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall protection can only combat new threats if the software is current. Set your security software to update automatically, and periodically scan your computer for viruses and spyware.

2) Make sure your OS and Web browser are current. Operating system companies issue security patches to repair flaws in their systems. Set your operating system and Web browser to automatically download and install these critical security patches.

3) Use private email to protect your information. Common email is exposed to spam, identity theft, and phishing scams to name a few. Using a private email service like PrivacyHarbor.com to send private and secure email ensures that your information is kept safe.

4) Password-protect your financial information. If you keep financial information stored on an electronic device, be sure to password-protect the information in case of theft. Do not store the passwords in the laptop or device.

5) Back-up your information. When you have important financial information stored on your computer, be sure to store the information externally on a flash drive, removable disk or external hard drive.

Taking proactive steps to protect your financial information will ensure a safer online experience. Contact us to learn more about how PrivacyHarbor.com can help protect your personal information during this busy financial season and secure it throughout the new year.

Ever wonder why the banner ads you see in your email happen to feature a product that you just purchased from your favorite online retailer? Or a highlight appears for a hotel deal to that quaint European city that you and your friend were just chatting about over instant message? These advertisements are no coincidence, and most email users want them stopped.

Many well known email programs scan your personal online conversations searching for information that allows them to sell to you, the unassuming user. According to the online study, “Americans Reject Tailored Advertising,” performed by the Annenberg School for Communication, University of California Berkeley School of Law, and the Annenberg Public Policy Center, 66 percent of Internet users do not want marketers to send them tailored advertisements. Furthermore, when these users are informed that their personal content is being repurposed, in order to create these tailored advertisements, the results show that between 73 and 86 percent do not want such advertising.

As much of the Internet is being powered by advertising dollars, this problem is rampant. Such targeted invasions of privacy are not only beginning to catch the attention of email users, but the policy makers in Washington as well. The Tennessean reports that U.S. Representative Richard Boucher, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet, is drafting legislation that will require websites to prominently disclose what information they gather on visitors as well as obtain user approval before collecting data to share with other advertising companies.

Even if Congress enacts such laws, online tracking of consumers will continue in some form or another, particularly by retailers, as highlighted in a recent USA Today article. So let’s start the discussion:

How do you feel about advertisers and retailers taking your personal information and creating tailored email advertising?

PrivacyHarbor.com private email does not mine or sell your information; we’re in the privacy business, not the advertising business. Feel free to contact us to learn more about this subject and the steps PrivacyHarbor.com takes provide you with secure email and to ensure your absolute privacy.

Have you ever been walking down the street with a friend, talking loudly about an amusing personal story and then right as you got to the juiciest part you passed by a stranger on the street who happened to hear the whole thing? You probably didn’t think much of it since you didn’t know the person. But, what if later that day you went to a job interview and that same stranger who overheard your juicy conversation ended up interviewing you for the position? Talk about an embarrassing situation!

While this situation seems highly unlikely in a person’s day to day routine, this happens to people every day on the Internet. Juicy gossip and embarrassing stories about you, your friends and your family can get spread publicly across social media forums, profiles and message boards in plain view of employers, bosses, co-workers and other professionals. Ever wonder if the information you publicly posted about yourself might have cost you a new job or promotion?

There are no passing conversations on the Internet. Anything publicly posted about you will stay online, often in posterity for all of time – that’s why protecting your private information online is so important.

Some web users are under the misconception that the Internet offers the same privacy and protection as the “real world,” when in fact there are very few laws regulating one’s rights to online privacy. A recent article from the Japan Times by Bruce Schneier called, “Offhand but on Record” covers the top privacy concerns with today’s popular social media websites and the advertising partners that support them. Schneier calls for “comprehensive data privacy laws, protecting our data and communications regardless of where it is stored or how it is processed,” but stricter laws alone will not save users who continue to publicly post sensitive information.

Privacy education is the key. If you are going to use social media websites and blogging tools like Facebook, Twitter or WordPress, be aware of the content you publicly post and make sure you set your privacy settings to block sensitive information from public view. When using job boards and career networking websites like Jobdango or LinkedIn, make sure that your resume and profile are up-to-date and don’t contain errors, typos, or other information that could disqualify you from your future job or promotion.

There is a useful article on the, “10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know” that can provide social media users with additional tips to protect their privacy online while still utilizing social media websites.

As Internet technologies continue to expand the mining and sharing of information, online privacy will continue to be a growing concern. The best way to maintain your privacy online is to use social media and networking sites with caution and to spread the word about privacy concerns with other professionals online.

Today, the PrivacyHarbor team released our new Beacon Desktop Email Notifier, now available for download. This new feature will alert users via a small pop-up window on their desktop when they receive a new e-mail message, regardless of whether they are logged into their PrivacyHarbor email account.

The new Beacon Desktop Notifier is free for all accounts and includes the following features:

• Beacon Icon Status – Unique icons in your system tray will show you when you are online and have new messages, or are offline and have no new messages.

• Inbox Beacon Message Preview – When the Beacon is active, you will receive a notice informing you when new messages have arrived in your inbox.

• SnapGuard Beacon Message Preview – You will also be notified of new messages in SnapGuard. By default, you will be notified twice a day about messages from unknown recipients that go into SnapGuard.

• Compatible with Windows 2000, XP, and Vista (Please note that Mac OS X is currently unsupported).

To learn more about PrivacyHarbor or to sign-up for PrivacyHarbor email account, simply follow the links or contact us at support@privacyharbor.com.

As always, we love to hear from our customers! Feel free to let us know what you think of the new Beacon Desktop Notifier.

About twenty years ago a data service – I forget which one – offered a set of compact disks for sale. It contained the names, phone numbers, addresses and demographic data for everyone in the United States. The product launch was drowned out by the howls of outrage from journalists and Congress. It was an unthinkable violation of privacy. It was Orwellian. The venture sank without a trace. For a while.

Ten years later David Brin wrote The Transparent Society making the case that secrets would soon be impossible to keep and that we shouldn’t even try. The Information Age would usher in an era where everyone’s life was on display. Governments would be models of transparency and openness. Corporations would throw open their records or pay through the nose for the privilege of keeping a few vital things confidential for a limited time. Privacy would be an outdated concept. A decade down the line he seems to be batting .500. While business and government have an increasingly broad view of what they can hide from the public the lives of the Little People are on display to an extent that would have been unthinkable just a few decades ago.

Today? Ah, today is not at all like yesterday. We take it for granted that a few minutes or a few seconds plus a few dollars can extract anyone’s picture, phone numbers and address not to mention the most personal details of his or her life. People sign up for services which tell everyone in the world exactly where they are at all times. Friends of mine with Military Intelligence backgrounds describe how they used to agonize over photos in wallets, matchbooks and brands of cologne to try and piece together the outlines of a target’s contacts and associations. Today their subjects spend hours doing the work themselves with Facebook. Targeted advertising works so well that it’s killing traditional venues like printed newspapers. Twitter and Hotmail are free for the user because they are worth serious money to the real customers – advertisers.

In the last day or so I came across two very interesting takes on how much the world has changed. The BBC’s World Have Your Say featured a spirited worldwide discussion, also available as a downloadable podcast on how transparent our lives should be. My favorite security expert, the brilliant and very readable Bruce Schneier, wrote an excellent piece in the Japan Times. When you exchange information online it stays. Most data you think are private are only that way until someone else decides it’s worth something to share or sell them.

It’s not something most of us think about. We use credit cards. We tweet about whatever comes into our head and broadcast it. But it is very serious business which can have profound repercussions years later. The information we put out for the world to see is worth money to others. We should think about whether it’s worth something to us, how much we should value what we currently give away for free.

When people communicate, they want to believe that what they say or write is private. People take precautions every day to make sure information is shared only with the intended recipients.

Consider the example of people having a conversation in public. When you want to say something personal you will probably look around, lean in and either speak quietly. Sometimes you will hold your thought until you get to a more private location. You don’t want other people to know what you are saying.

The same should be true on the Internet. Most people don’t care if others know that they are going to go to a movie later that night. However, people often share personal financial, medical or legal information over the Internet.   They believe that these Internet conversations are private.  The reality is that much of the Internet is set up to gather your information to sell, spam or scam you. Recent estimates reported spam accounting for more than 90% of all email received.  What do you do to protect yourself? One way is to carefully understand the privacy policies of the websites you visit and see who owns your content. You will be surprised to find that in most cases you do not own what you write; often you don’t even own the content of your own emails.

While most companies don’t hire people to personally read your email, they do build computers to scan the content and sell that information to advertisers. These advertisements are specifically trying to exploit your personal information. Unfortunately, this often leads to serious issues such as spam and identity theft.

If a privacy policy is confusing it is often written that way by design. Many sites claim they don’t share their content with anyone, however between themselves and their subsidiaries, your information can spread over the Internet very quickly.

In addition to reviewing a privacy policy, a good way to tell that the company will exploit your privacy is by looking at their business model. If they have advertising on their site, advertising partners, or subsidiaries that have advertising, that is a telltale sign that they will in some way make money from your personal information.

You are the only person who controls what information you want to share. If you don’t want the world to know your legal, financial and medical history, be sure to carefully read the privacy policies and understand the true business model of the websites you visit.

We are excited to implement all the great suggestions from customers and visitors that we have received over the past year.  Some of the major differences that you will notice are the slide show and videos, a news scroll and of course our blog that you are reading now.

I’d like to take just a moment to describe a few of these new features. The first one is the slide show. Many people have asked us to tell them a little more about who we are and what the difference is between private email and common email. The slide show will explain that and much more.

Contained in the same area as our slide show is our video section. We will have weekly In The Know videos telling you about what is happening at PrivacyHarbor.com, as well as other topical videos that you see listed.  We will be updating these videos often, so check back and see what we’ve added. If you’ve created a video that you would like us to know about, just send a link to info@privacyharbor.com with your contact information and we’ll contact you if we add it to our video section.

Finally, we have this blog. We’ll share information about PrivacyHarbor.com, as well as privacy news that is most pertinent to private communications over the Internet. This section is built to be informative and interactive, that’s why we have it on our homepage. Please write to our blog to chat, ask about PrivacyHarbor.com or any privacy news that you come across. We look forward to hearing from you.

We are passionate about privacy and believe that your email communications should be private. Sign up for an account and tell your friends about us, so they too can take back their privacy with PrivacyHarbor.com.

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