Do You Care Enough to Opt Out of Online Tracking?

Internet privacy, specifically how corporations track your online behavior, is all over the news these days. Interestingly, Time Magazine recently reported that most people don't really care.  Some people even appreciate getting search results and special offers tailored to them.

Time says:
For all of the constant noise generated by the press, most people don’t really care about their privacy. Don’t get me wrong; they care about the principle of privacy. It certainly feels icky to know that companies are tracking your every move.
They don’t, however, care about the act of being tracked, or not enough to change their behavior in any significant way. The thought of their data floating around in a market that they’ll never see is just too abstract.
[...]
So how do you stop companies from knowing everything about you? The short answer is that unless you start living like a survivalist, it’s extremely difficult to completely stay off of corporate America’s radar.
A study in October at Carnegie Mellon University found that tools meant to limit online behavioral advertising (OBA) were either ineffective or too confusing for most people to use. That included browser tools, third-party blocking tools and opt-out tools from several advertising networks.
[Read the full article]

However, if you are one of the people who cares enough about corporate tracking and data mining to give it a try, this article, also from Time gives some good suggestions on how to keep your searches secret. Good Luck.