Browser privacy

OS: Win 2k
Browser: IE6

A browser privacy check of my PC showed me the following result:

"Danger!
Your browser reveals private information about you and
your computer. It sends information about previous sites you have visited.
It may also save special cookies on your hard drive that have the purpose of directing advertising or finding out your habits while web surfing. "
Now, for a while I was aware that a particular web site selling sofware to keep prying eyes away your PC while surfing. What they did is hack my Pc while online and show me right in my face a portion of my hard's drive private files, I was really stunned but ignore them.
After the above test I don't think I can keep ignoring this problem. I have a firewall (ZoneAlarm - the free version.)
What I want to know if there is anything I can do to prevent prying eyes from looking at my private files let alone access my PC while online?

Thanks

 

Read this. As a matter of curiosity, was the "browser check" you ran affiliated to a particular software vendor?

There are privacy issues relating to the use of cookies and referrer logging (both of which are mainly used to either remember passwords (as is the case on this site) or to target marketing) but, IMO, these issues are not really worth worrying about (although other people will feel differently).

 

You can in Zone Alarm close all ports in Stealth mode. But when I tried it actually couldn't close one port. Realised this when I visited the page: https://grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2

 

Legedien wrote:

ZA should be able to stealth every port - which was shown as open?

 

Oki, you're right Brett! Zone Alarm DID close all ports. It was on my other two computers that are connected to D-link, one port wasn't properly closed (it's not stealth). A tiny bit of a senile mind *L*

 

browser privacy - Brett I need more info

Thanks Brett for your help. The "browser check" that I ran was in no way affiliated to a particular software vendor? I had (http://www.pcflank.com/) performing that test on my PC later.
I was just surfing some days before the port scan.
It was a popup ad that showed me my personal files and suggested that I obtain their software. I knew it was a ploy to get me to buy their program. So, if that company wrote a Javascript showing me files detail on my hard drive, how can I find that script on my drive and delete it? Or was that script temporary?
I wonder how my ZoneAlarm firewall let that one go through.
Please let me know.
GBoss

 

It's all explained in the other thread to which I linked. The script displays folder contents locally (in other words, you and only you can see what's listed!).