For the moment, my porn interests are protected by the honor system. My collection is under a folder labled Porn (Explicit) and on the rare incidence that someone else is using my computer, they are assumed to have been warned as they cross that threshold.
I'm pretty sure, should I die, my parents would rather delete such files, sight unseen, or hand it over to a friend of mine or neutral party before discovering the horrible truth possibility of, say, an incest fetish.
My real privacy concerns have to do with the range of topics I study as a researcher, which might raise alarm, were my browsing history tracked by certain government agencies. Here in the US, they're not supposed to do that, but they do, off the record.
Also, when a court order demands the URLs of visitors to a given sight (as in the Sony of America vs. GeoHot), that information becomes public record,. Also, here in the US, said agencies are eager to put folks on certain kinds of lists, so I wouldn't be surprised if I'm a usual suspect regularly considered and ruled out when it comes to certain types of political crimes.
We've seen more than a few Wizard Did It scenarios in the recent era, sadly, none of which would be blocked by securing your own computer. My Chrome history is tracked by Google, and isn't particular to one system or another.[footnote]Which also gives me the advantage of searching my complete history regardless of which terminal I'm using, so this isn't entirely a bad thing.[/footnote] Specific governments, such as Iran and China also keep tabs on the browsing histories through ISPs within their borders, which has caused more than a few scandals regarding the International Press Core, and their right to access the net without local scrutiny or censorship.
My solution, were it to become a necessity to protect my privacy[footnote]Say, if the US were to get too paranoid, or were I to become a significant enough political entity to make enemies[/footnote] would be to create a script that constantly did random surfing during my off hours, making it really unclear exactly what was legitimate research and what was my computer goofing off. The point would also be to make it a sorting nightmare for anyone with the unhappy task of implicating me of a crime.
238U.
no history left behind
