When surfing the web, take steps to maintain your privacy:

Don’t talk to strangers.
News groups and Chat rooms are not secure.  Email from you tells recipients your address. Use a third-party such as ZeroKnowledge  to email and do other transactions anonymously.  Or, use a third-party cyberpunk such as the Anonymizer.  Such third-parties might not be perfect, but helpful.  Even if off-line be careful not to give out information that can be joined with on-line information — like having your Social Security Number in a public file or giving out your address over the phone. Beware of any stranger appealing to your sympathy, fear, sense of duty, vanity, laziness, lust, guilt or greed.

Don’t accept food from strangers.
Cookies can be a delightful treat to you from sites, enabling them to store on your hard disk the information you want them to have so that each visit to the site will have your preference remembered.  However, like any treat, in the wrong hands, it can be used maliciously by the unscrupulous to store information that you would rather they not store.  Dumb cookie ingredients:  where, what, when, and how often. It can only be a smart cookie if you provide the information.You are in control !!! You can block all cookies using browser settings; you can opt-out from receiving cookies from particular site advertisers such as DoubleClick; you can manage cookies with programs such as Opera; and, you can delete cookies from your hard drive — manually or with your browser’s assistance.

Don’t allow eavesdroppers.
SSL browsers scramble messages; only the proper receiver can unscramble the message. That’s cryptographic, i.e. encryption encodes messages  and decryption decodes them.  But, often encryption is used to mean both encoding and decoding.

Require positive ID. 
Your browser can give a warning before loading unregistered controls and scripts.  SSL browsers make sure the receiver is not an imposter. They demand a certificate issued to the site by a Certification Authority  (CA) such as Equifax , GlobalSign , and VeriSign .  That’s authentication.

Suspect messages with broken seals.
SSL browsers detect even the slightest message tampering. That’s integrity validation.

Detect non-secure sites.
SSL browsers display a security icon — a locked padlock in the lower left corner of the window for example — to indicate a secure site. Or, you can look at a site’s address. If it  just reads “http” and not “https”, the site does not use SSL technology.  Communicating in a non-SSL site brings up a warning message box from most SSL browsers.  Check the browser’s Help menu.

Update your browser.   Get the most recent version possible to obtain the latest security technology.   Microsoft freely provides security bulletins and help.

Look for SSL as a browser feature.  A browser with this feature will display it proudly in ads.  128-bit encryption is better than 40-bit encryption.  

Use a browser from a trusted source. 
Leading browsers are from well known companies.  As new browsers become available, check out the browser’s development company.  For example, do they have a write-up in a credible magazine?  Whether buying, borrowing or downloading, obtain your browser from a reputable source.  Try FireFox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari or Opera.

Erase your tracks.   If you share your computer with others, you might consider emptying your browser cache so others can’t see where you’ve been surfing. Also, consider the Recycling Bin, Address Bar, the Favorites, Bookmarks, and Recent Documents areas as potential footprint keepers to clear.

Fight fear with fact.
Don’t let fear-mongers and tech-bashers cancel your surfing plans.  Surf with confidence that it is unlikely that your computer will catch a virus simply by visiting a web site.   Considering the millions of computers that would be affected, wouldn’t that be front page news?  Get bulletins from Microsoft about potential vulnerabilities and how to eliminate them.