The Sensible Person's guide to Privacy...

Good article on GigaOm re privacy and gradations of paranoia:

Feeling Practical But Not Paranoid?

Do not use desktop search tools like Google Desktop or Microsoft Desktop Search. A full index of every keyword on your hard drive in the hands of marketers is very useful for the purposes of targeted advertising.

Do not use webmail from a service provider like AT&T, Google or Microsoft. Same reason as above, except here it applies to every email you send or receive.

Do not use browser toolbars or desktop gadgets. Both of these types of add-ons from companies like Yahoo and Google are known to gather information on your online activity for marketing purposes.

Remove all social network accounts. There is loads of good information there that can be used for targeting and correlation. At the very least, remove all personal information and have a username that does not give any clues to your true identity.

Which is no doubt why certain SocNets want Real Identities

Clear your browser cookies after every session. Alternatively, only search using Ask.com and enable AskEraser. To take erasing your footprint a step further, do not accept any browser cookies by default. This additional step will make web surfing slower and more intrusive as you will have to manually accept or deny cookies. That being said, if you surf for an hour without accepting cookies by default you will become much more aware of them, and that in and of itself could prove enlightening.

It is indeed enlightning......I don't know if y'all have ever tried CrapCleaner but its a nice little package for cleansing the system.

Change your local username daily. Browsers and other software have been known to pass local usernames to servers as part of their operation. If your username is something like “first.lastname” this is clearly useful information for data collection purposes.

Use Opera. With Opera, you can mimic another browser’s identification string, which helps mask your browser’s settings and reduces the information that you send to a web site when you visit.

Must say, I don't do these last two....

Paranoid and Happy to Admit It:

Do not make international phone calls. Even if warrantless wiretapping by the NSA does not concern you, you need to be aware of Echelon.

Do not have a home broadband connection. If you have a home broadband connection, a network service provider can map your name to your IP address to your physical location. Again, your name, where you live and your Internet activity is all useful information for marketers.

Use free Wi-Fi. If you don’t have a home broadband connection but you will still want to be connected, find a free wireless access point at a local coffee shop. To further hide your existence, every time your computer associates with a wireless access point, manually change your MAC address.

Install a host-based Intrusion Detection System (IDS) like OSSEC. Assuming that you are already using a personal firewall, anti-spam and anti-spy software, a host-based IDS will ensure your computer isn’t being used without your knowledge. For an additional level of security, you could block all Internet traffic except for HTTP (port 80) and then log and trap anything else.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes for obfuscating routers and MAC address auto-switchers to emerge. And if you are certain they are out to get you...

If you’re not satisfied being paranoid and want to venture into the land of Ted Kaczynski, you should give up on email, not have a home phone, use a pre-paid mobile phone that you change frequently, get all of your physical mail at a P.O. box and do every transaction (including buying a home or cabin in the woods) with cash.