I have ad blockers, I block cookies, trackers, and even LSOs. I disable them for certain sites when I need to, and then immediately remove the trackers. There are plenty of extensions to enable this.

And I know that the ads pay the bills, but I have a slow connection and ads slow down page loading times.

I have about 3 miles of copper between me and the end of the fiber optics. That's the max for DSL. I have 3 choices for Internet:

1) Satellite - which is expensive, has latency, and from what I've read, the service isn't good here especially during the rainy season.

2) Cable TV. I called Comcast and they will not give me Internet without TV. I explained I haven't watched TV since the 1980s, and they just refused to give me Internet only. I don't want to pay an additional 600/year for something I'm not going to use.

3)DSL Lite from ATT. My neighbor works for ATT and has full-blown DSL for free, but tells me he rarely attains speeds faster than DSL Lite, and when he does, they aren't much faster at all.

So I have DSL Lite, which means even YouTube videos often stop to buffer during the playback.

It's the price for living in almost paradise. But right now paradise means hurricane. I've been through a dozen or more and I'm prepared.

One more thing; I download orders from my customers from my shopping cart. I do not download the credit card numbers, I let the bank and authorization companies take care of all that. There is no reason to store them on my computer and put my customers at risk. But when I download the orders, I do get their address and e-mail. It's on a secure connection, and I will remove them from my Internet computer and transfer them to a non-online computer.

I also remove my customers e-mail addresses from my e-mail app after they have been transferred.

I take my customer's security more seriously than I do my own (and I'm serious about mine). The less Google and others know about me, the less there is that can be exposed if a cracker/hacker invades Google or whoever else has my data.

Things are different on my phone.

I have active ear plugs. Etymotic Music Pro devices. They protect my ears while gigging at volumes of under 100db (stage volume is usually less than 90) but when the music is off, are transparent so I can hear what they guy in the middle of the room is trying to tell me.

They use hearing aid batteries. I searched on my phone (Android) for a good price on the batteries. For weeks I got ads for hearing aids, adult diapers, handicap toilets, pain medication, and all things you may need in a nursing home.

So I did some searches for music instruments and supplies, which didn't work as well as consumer music like mp3 downloads and CDs. At least the ads generated by this were relevant to my interests. One of my friends said I should have done searches for women's bikinis wink

And no, I don't connect my Android/Account, e-mail address, or phone number with my computer. The less they know about me means the less info a cracker/hacker can get - because sooner or later every big company has a data theft.

I'm not paranoid, just careful. The proverbial ounce of prevention.

Insights and incites by Notes

Bob "Notes" Norton smile Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com

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