Chinese Association of Idaho State University (CAISU)
3 Steps to Protect Your Online Privacy in 2019
Online privacy is a topic that grows in importance every single year. #faf@31
With more and more web services, connected apps, and even home assistant devices that are gaining in popularity, it’s now more crucial than ever to understand what the dangers to your online privacy are and how to protect it consciously.
Here are 19 actionable steps to help you remain anonymous on the web and protect your online privacy. No sophisticated computer knowledge required.
1. Consider getting a VPN
Normally, your connection to the web is unprotected by anything. It’s just your computer requesting a website (or a service, or a tweet, etc.) and then the server providing that website to you.
What’s problematic from an online privacy point of view here is that such a connection is public, can be intercepted, and every server helping on with the connection along the way can take a peek into what’s being transmitted. If it’s a sensitive email (or anything to that nature) then you really don’t want that.
This is where a VPN comes into play. VPN (or virtual private network) is a service that allows you to connect to the web safely by routing your connection through a VPN server before it gets to its destination.
Here’s a quick visualization of what your connection looks like without and then with a VPN enabled:
What a VPN service actually does is encrypting the connection so that even if someone intercepts it, the information within will be scrambled and unreadable. In fact, no intercepting party will be able to determine where the connection is coming from or what it is about, thus giving you improved online privacy.
Even though the concept might seem complicated and intimidating at first, modern VPNs are actually very easy to use and don’t require any technical skills like server configuration or routing. All you need to do is literally install your VPN of choice and enable it with a single click.
2. Use the privacy/incognito mode
All current versions of web browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Opera come with a privacy mode.
For example, in Chrome, if you press CMD+SHIFT+N (Mac) or CTRL+SHIFT+N (Win), you will open a new tab in privacy mode. In that mode, the browser doesn’t store any data at all from the current session. This means no web history, no web cache, no cookies, nothing at all.
Use this mode whenever doing anything that you’d prefer remain private and not able to be retrieved at a later date on the device that you’re using.
However! Let’s make it clear that privacy modes don’t make the connection more secure in any way. They just make it private in relation to your own device – meaning, they make it private on your end only.
(Privacy modes are also available in mobile browsers.)
3. Block web activity trackers
The main online privacy concern with the modern web is that you’re basically being tracked everywhere you go.
And this is not only about ads. Basically, every website that you visit will attempt to track your activity in multiple different manners. Just to name a few:
Traffic analytics – used commonly by most websites to get a better understanding of their audience, where they’re from, what devices they’re using, how much time they’re spending on the website, what sub-pages they’re interacting with, and so on.
Current location – commonly used by functional widgets like weather widgets, “near events”, and so on. But also used for general tracking and data analysis.
Social media – used to show you people’s activity in relation to the page or article that you’re reading. A specific example of this is the Facebook pixel:
Facebook pixel – those are meant to connect your activity with your Facebook profile, thus giving Facebook a better understanding of what your behavior is and what to show in your news feed (including which ads you’re most likely to enjoy).
Media trackers – for example, if there’s a YouTube video on the page, that video block is connected to your other YouTube activity, thus having an impact on what kind of videos YouTube is likely to recommend you next.
All of those trackers can make websites slower and generally less safe to use.
One of the viable solutions is to use a tool like Ghostery. It’s free and has versions for all major web browsers. The installation is simple, and it basically starts working right out the box.
http://www.buyexpressvpn.net/default-passwords-and-the-dangers-they...
http://www.buyexpressvpn.net/steven-smith-ruled-out-of-third-ashes-...
http://www.buyexpressvpn.net/ritavpn-reviews/
With more and more web services, connected apps, and even home assistant devices that are gaining in popularity, it’s now more crucial than ever to understand what the dangers to your online privacy are and how to protect it consciously.
Here are 19 actionable steps to help you remain anonymous on the web and protect your online privacy. No sophisticated computer knowledge required.
1. Consider getting a VPN
Normally, your connection to the web is unprotected by anything. It’s just your computer requesting a website (or a service, or a tweet, etc.) and then the server providing that website to you.
What’s problematic from an online privacy point of view here is that such a connection is public, can be intercepted, and every server helping on with the connection along the way can take a peek into what’s being transmitted. If it’s a sensitive email (or anything to that nature) then you really don’t want that.
This is where a VPN comes into play. VPN (or virtual private network) is a service that allows you to connect to the web safely by routing your connection through a VPN server before it gets to its destination.
Here’s a quick visualization of what your connection looks like without and then with a VPN enabled:
What a VPN service actually does is encrypting the connection so that even if someone intercepts it, the information within will be scrambled and unreadable. In fact, no intercepting party will be able to determine where the connection is coming from or what it is about, thus giving you improved online privacy.
Even though the concept might seem complicated and intimidating at first, modern VPNs are actually very easy to use and don’t require any technical skills like server configuration or routing. All you need to do is literally install your VPN of choice and enable it with a single click.
2. Use the privacy/incognito mode
All current versions of web browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Opera come with a privacy mode.
For example, in Chrome, if you press CMD+SHIFT+N (Mac) or CTRL+SHIFT+N (Win), you will open a new tab in privacy mode. In that mode, the browser doesn’t store any data at all from the current session. This means no web history, no web cache, no cookies, nothing at all.
Use this mode whenever doing anything that you’d prefer remain private and not able to be retrieved at a later date on the device that you’re using.
However! Let’s make it clear that privacy modes don’t make the connection more secure in any way. They just make it private in relation to your own device – meaning, they make it private on your end only.
(Privacy modes are also available in mobile browsers.)
3. Block web activity trackers
The main online privacy concern with the modern web is that you’re basically being tracked everywhere you go.
And this is not only about ads. Basically, every website that you visit will attempt to track your activity in multiple different manners. Just to name a few:
Traffic analytics – used commonly by most websites to get a better understanding of their audience, where they’re from, what devices they’re using, how much time they’re spending on the website, what sub-pages they’re interacting with, and so on.
Current location – commonly used by functional widgets like weather widgets, “near events”, and so on. But also used for general tracking and data analysis.
Social media – used to show you people’s activity in relation to the page or article that you’re reading. A specific example of this is the Facebook pixel:
Facebook pixel – those are meant to connect your activity with your Facebook profile, thus giving Facebook a better understanding of what your behavior is and what to show in your news feed (including which ads you’re most likely to enjoy).
Media trackers – for example, if there’s a YouTube video on the page, that video block is connected to your other YouTube activity, thus having an impact on what kind of videos YouTube is likely to recommend you next.
All of those trackers can make websites slower and generally less safe to use.
One of the viable solutions is to use a tool like Ghostery. It’s free and has versions for all major web browsers. The installation is simple, and it basically starts working right out the box.
http://www.buyexpressvpn.net/default-passwords-and-the-dangers-they...
http://www.buyexpressvpn.net/steven-smith-ruled-out-of-third-ashes-...
http://www.buyexpressvpn.net/ritavpn-reviews/
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