Skills

Please do at least two from each group

Basic Web Tricks

  1. Set up a personal Web page and post the URL to the class blog (under “second assignment”)
  2. Install and use Azureus to download something (BONUS for non-pirated content)
  3. Configure your browser to warn you before accepting cookies
  4. Look the same thing on four different search engines and note whether the results differ.
  5. Find phone numbers and addresses in an online White Pages

Privacy: Yours

  1. Browse anonymously, using the Anonymizer
  2. Look yourself up at http://www.anywho.com , then click on “maps” and on your address
  3. Analyze your privacy (be sure to page down…)
  4. Read about, and install, Bugnosis (only works for IE, alas)
  5. Run the cookie demo. Then Go to the cookie check page and see how many advertising site have given, or might be able to give, you cookies.  Then, opt out of internet advertisement tracking cookies at The Network Advertising Initiative

Privacy: Other People’s

  1. See who’s registered a domain name that’s already taken
  2. Visit Metaspy and spy on a few search requests, then check out Google’s Zeitgeist
  3. Look up someone you know at Altavista’s Image Search
  4. Look up someone you know, or wish you knew, in the Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser Public Access pages

Commerce

  1. Browse eBay and (locate and) read its User Agreement and Privacy Policy
  2. Pretend you were about to buy a book or compact disk online and (locate and) read the site’s User Agreement and Privacy Policy
  3. Surf stock message boards at Silicon Investor, or Yahoo, or at hotstockmarket.com. (Bonus: can you figure out what is going on here?)
  4. Use a price-comparison service to find the lowest online price for a 64MB Compact Flash Memory Card

OPTIONAL

    Advanced Web Tricks

  1. Play internet radio stations from shoutcast or roll your own via Pandora (this is really great -you should try it)
  2. Find and review your browser’s cache and cookie files
  3. Privacy: Install PGP from a non-US server
  4. Install a spyware checker
  5. Install a free firewall
  6. Translate web pages in a foreign language into English (or other languages) at BabelFish

    Extra Advanced Web Tricks

  1. Suggest something that should be part of this web page in the comments.

Thanks to Prof. Walter Effross, who compiled the original list from which this is adapted.