Safely visiting trans websites
As I mentioned at the top, this is the safest way to get information. Just
make sure the site is legit. In recent years, there have been several fake teen transsexual
sites put up by pathetic scumbags. Sometimes these sites have erroneous
advice, but usually they want you to email them. If you aren't sure if a site
is the real deal, contact me, and I'll see what I can find out.
Remember, not only can people monitor you from your end, but website owners
can monitor you from their end. For instance, I can tell when someone visits
my sites from a corporate site. If you are worried about this, you can surf
the web safely through several systems. I like the SamSpade safebrowser option, although it lists source code
and not images. For text-based sites, this is good.
Not secure: The Google search engine has a “Cached”
option at the end of the entry. A reader wrote in 2002: "Regarding the
recommendation to use Google cache to browse websites: That does not prevent
your visit from being logged by the website in most cases. If the website contains
images, you are still loading those images from the website rather than from
Google."
As a general rule, don't order stuff, sign website guestbooks, fill out forms,
take polls, or respond to phone numbers on websites.
Bottom line: surfing websites is generally quite safe, but only you can decide
what level of precautions is right for you.
Parental controls and monitoring software
If you are reading this page, you probably are not being blocked by parental
controls, but some computers may not let you visit this site. In addition, your
parents may have software installed that allow them to see where you have been
going online. It's important to be careful if you think they will respond badly.
A reader writes:
I have Norton Antivirus 2004 and it likes to block the website and put it
under my blocked content under parental control. Here's the message:
Norton Internet Security has blocked access to this restricted site.
Site: http://www.tsroadmap.com/
Blocked categories: Sex Education/Sexuality
If you think this web site is incorrectly categorized, visit the Symantec
Internet Security Center to report it. I'm positive that AOL or any other
parental control would block your site.
Anoymous Proxy may be a way to get around business or family computer filters
but there will still be the trace of the proxy URL.. So I think the proxy
would be more for kids who need to visit these websites under anonymity. Though
alot of parental control blocks proxy's as Annoymous Proxies so it is very
hard to find a good one. I use www.amegaproxy.com I get so much bandwidth
and I can maybe read information for an hour or so.
I also found that if I look the page up on Google then click the cache link
you can visit an older version without it being blocked.
Purging your web browsing history after a session
In most browsers you can set your hard disk cache to 0. This
will keep your computer from storing files from pages you have visited, but
you still have to do something about that pesky history file, though.
A reader wrote with ways to purge the History file most browsers
keep:
There's a functionality on almost all browsers that logs all
sites you visited during say the last 20 days. It's called history and the
sites visited can be listed by pressing CTRL-H on most browsers. What appears
in the address bar when you are typing something comes from this list.
Its data is most compromising thing stored in a computer.
To clean it in MS Internet Explorer, you go to:
Tools > Internet Options > General
and press the Clear History button.
In Netscape Navigator you press CTRL-H, mark what you want
to hide and press DEL.
In Opera you have a wonderful option called Delete private
data that clean EVERYTHING. You should recommend this browser.
You should put this on your site and warn the others. History
is the easiest way to discover what others are doing in the Web.
A reader writes with an additional security tip:
With respect to "deleting" browser cache and history files: For
maximum security, you may want to further suggest that users concerned with
the discovery of sensitive information after a web session may want to consider
not only deleting cache and history files--which remain on the hard drive
after a delete operation and can be resurrected and restored by many disk
recovery utilities)--but to also use a disk wiping utility to overwrite these
files so that they cannot be recovered. I use a freeware program called "Sure
Delete" to perform this task; there are many other similar products available.
Alternate browsers
In addition to Opera, you might consider looking into GhostZilla.
A reader writes:
There's a new program out called GhostZilla. Its a web browser except it
hides itself within another program. This can be useful if you
want to appear to be running Word, but actually you're running a browser.
It's complicated and I don't funny understand it <w> but it
seems to work just fine.
http://www.ghostzilla.com/
What's more intereting is that Ghostzilla produce a CD based browser that
doesn't keen any history on your computer at all. Sadly, there is a charge
for this (about 10 bucks), but someone may find a use for it.
In this section:
Transgender web safety
Safely visiting transgender websites
Safely interacting with others online
Putting up your own website: pros and cons
How to minimize an existing web presence
Readers who have been outed online
Reader tips: online safety
Other web resources
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