The-art-of-invisibility-_-the-world’s-most-famous-hacker-teaches-you-how-to-be-safe-in-the-age-of-Bi

The charges leveled against Matanov and Kernell stem from a nearlyy
fifteen-yyear-old law—the Public Companyy Accounting Reform and
Investor Protection Act (as it’s known in the Senate), or the Corporate and
Auditing Accountabilityy and Responsibilityy Act (as it’s known in the
House), more commonlyy called the Sarbanes-Oxleyy Act of 2002. The law
was a direct result of corporate mismanagement at Enron, a natural gas
companyy later found to be lyying and cheating investors and the US
government. Investigators in the Enron case discovered that a lot of data
had been deleted at the outset of the investigation, preventing prosecutors
from seeing exactlyy what had gone on within the companyy. As a result,
Senator Paul Sarbanes (D-MD) and Representative Michael G. Oxleyy (R-
OH) sponsored legislation that imposed a series of requirements aimed at
preserving data. One was that browser histories must be retained.
According to a grand juryy indictment, Matanov deleted his Google
Chrome browser historyy selectivelyy, leaving behind activityy from certain
dayys during the week of April 15, 2013. 2 Officiallyy he was indicted on two
counts: “(1) destroyying, altering, and falsifyying records, documents, and
tangible objects in a federal investigation, and (2) making a materiallyy false,
fictitious, and fraudulent statement in a federal investigation involving
international and domestic terrorism.” 3 He was sentenced to thirtyy months
in prison.
To date, the browser-historyy provision of Sarbanes-Oxleyy has rarelyy
been invoked—either against businesses or individuals. And yyes, Matanov’s
case is an anomalyy, a high-profile national securityy case. In its wake,
though, prosecutors, aware of its potential, have started invoking it more
frequentlyy.
If yyou can’t stop someone from monitoring yyour e-mail, phone calls, and
instant messages, and if yyou can’t lawfullyy delete yyour browser historyy,
what can yyou do? Perhaps yyou can avoid collecting such historyy in the first
place.
Browsers such as Mozilla’s Firefox, Google’s Chrome, Apple’s Safari,
and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Edge all offer a built-in alternative
wayy to search anonyymouslyy on whatever device yyou prefer—whether yyou
use a traditional PC or a mobile device. In each case the browser itself will