Hadn't come across WP_HTTP_BLOCK_EXTERNAL before. Handy.

Massive, quite useful presentation from Paul Adams at Google

Or rather, how do you secure your machine?

"Here's how to make sure other people can't tag you on Places."

"Your PasswordCard has a unique grid of random letters and digits on it. The rows have different colors, and the columns different symbols. All you do is remember a combination of a symbol and a color, and then read the letters and digits from there."

"The current Facebook privacy policy already allows your “publicly available information,” which includes your name, gender, geographic region, friends list, fan pages, and your content marked “everyone,” to be automatically shared with external web sites when you visit them. The only thing apparently preventing this from happening right now is technology – Facebook has not yet rolled out an official means for Facebook Connect sites to automatically access such data. Apparently they soon plan on adding that technology for certain “pre-approved” sites, an update which the newer governing documents make more explicit."

Google serve up the dirt they have on you.

"Keeps an eye on 44 website policies. Every time one of them changes, you'll see an update here."

Sir Tim said his data and web history belonged to him. He said: "It's mine - you can't have it. If you want to use it for something, then you have to negotiate with me."

"Facebook has 59 million users [but] you won't catch Tom Hodgkinson volunteering his personal information - not now that he knows the politics of the people behind the social networking site"

"The big problem with Facebook is the plain fact that it’s an extremely annoying piece of software. I could go on for paragraphs and paragraphs about all the stupid, nasty, and sometimes scary things Facebook has done"

Comprehensive listing of problems with OpenID. FUD? Not FUD? Couldn't say myself but author competes in that space. OpenID + Passwordmaker.org is working well for me.

"Estonia started issuing electronic Identity Cards (eID) in 2002 to its citizens. Those eID’s will be OpenID’s soon!" OpenID, wooh!

"What are the Pros and Cons of OpenID currently? Here's a crack at it (from the Radar Team)"

"no-click disposable email system"

"If there were RSS feeds, users could read a privacy policy when they first started using a service, then subscribe to the RSS feed using whatever feed service they use. They wouldn’t have to regularly check the web site for updates, and they wouldn’t

"By encrypting messages before they leave your computer to the Internet, SimpLite-MSN prevents eavesdroppers from reading your MSN Messenger conversations."

Mailing Preference Service

The most common retort against privacy advocates -- by those in favor of ID checks, cameras, databases, data mining and other wholesale surveillance measures -- is this line: "If you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?"

"A secure place to gather, store, back-up and share any type of file with your co-workers, friends and family. You can upload, download and manage your files over SFTP (Secure FTP) or with any modern web browser."

"The Telephone Preference Service (TPS) helps you to make sure your telephone number is no longer available to organisations who may telephone you with offers and information you do not wish to receive"

JAP makes it possible to surf the internet anonymously and unobservably.