The government isn’t supposed to be watching everything you do online. For that, they need a warrant. But it turns out that they’ve been doing it anyway, thanks to a series of leaks by the likes of Edward Snowden. Many people value their privacy, both online and off, and they wonder how all their personal information might be used against them one day.
It’s led many people to look for ways to protect themselves against this increasing intrusion on their lives. Here’s how to protect your privacy online.
Avoid Facebook, Google, And Dropbox
Many people would rather go without food and water than be without their beloved Facebook. However, Facebook is in cahoots with advertisers and the intelligence services and will share your information at the drop of a hat, even if you tell it that you want your page to remain private. What this means in practice, according to people in the know, is that it is generally a bad idea to use these consumer platforms if you value your privacy in any shape or form.
Google has also been in the news over the last few years regarding a number of privacy scandals, and so it’s not surprising that the search giant would reappear in this post. Their privacy and data protection controls are compromised, and they regularly meet with White House staff and security agencies to discuss the transmission of personal user data.
Use Virtual Private Networks
In the past, internet service providers resisted calls to surveil their customers. But today, all these companies keep logs of what you get up to online without your permission thanks to government legislation. You can’t live without the internet, but there are ways around this intrusion. One way is to use a virtual private server which reroutes your traffic and hides your the source of your data. The cheapest Windows VPS are excellent value and can protect your privacy for relatively small amounts of money. These work by setting up different channels of communication, masking your actual location and IP address. They’re also great for businesses who don’t want large amount of hackable data flowing through local systems.
Encrypt All Your Online Communications
One of the reasons Whatsapp became so popular was down to the fact that it encrypted all user communications. Since then, governments have tried to crack the encryption to extend their surveillance powers, but there are some apps which they have been unable to compromise, as far as we know of course. Encrypting email and text messages is essential if you want to remain anonymous in your digital communications.
Use Tor For Browsing
Tor isn’t the perfect tool for browsing the internet anonymously, but it is still pretty good. The idea behind the service is to bounce all your online communications through a vast network of relays. The designers of the app hope that this will make tracking your activity difficult for anybody watching what you’re doing. The designers of the system claim that it’s nearly impossible for anybody trying to track you to pin down your physical location. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s certainly a lot better than most people are used to.