Protect Your Online Privacy Know-Hows

By Kate Spurdens November 13, 2019

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Want to make sure government agencies, ISPs, and cybercriminals don’t violate your privacy? Here’s what you can do to make sure your privacy stays intact.

(Newswire.net -- November 13, 2019) -- A quick overview of what you can do to protect your privacy from government surveillance, ISPs, and hackers when you browse the web.

Protect Your Online Privacy Know-Hows

What you do on the web should stay between you and your screen, right?

Well, that’s not how things work in the real world – pretty much anyone can spy on your online activities.

Luckily, there are things you can do to secure your privacy:

1. Use a Secure Email Service

Having an email is pretty much mandatory nowadays, so you need to make sure you use a good service.

Otherwise, you risk giving third parties access to your email data.

That’s not speculation – it’s long been known that Google lets third party apps do just that. Also, AOL and Yahoo! scan your emails to find info to sell to advertisers too.

And if that weren’t enough, these popular providers also offer questionable security. Hackers managed to steal data from around 500 million Yahoo! users, and AOL suffered a pretty serious data breach as well.

What about Google?

While Gmail does offer decent security, it’s nowhere near enough, since approximately five million Google account passwords (which also double as Gmail passwords) were leaked back in 2014.

Clearly, a good email service is a must.

But how do you find one?

Personally, I recommend ProtonMail. It’s an open source email solution that provides end-to-end encryption, and is based in Switzerland – so your data is protected by top-notch privacy laws.

Also, you don’t need to give out any personal info to create an account. ProtonMail doesn’t even keep IP logs, in fact. ProtonMail even has self-destructing emails.

And the service is very trustworthy – the company is 100% transparent, received positive audits from trusted third parties, and it only has one source of income: their users.

If you want to learn more about the ProtonMail service, check out that link.

2. Use Antivirus/Antimalware Software

Roughly 360,000 new malware samples flood the web every day. Rootkits, spyware, adware, ransomware - you name it.

So you need to install proper antivirus/antimalware programs on all your devices. Make sure they run regular scans – either every day or a few times a day.

Always keep them updated to the latest version. If you don’t do that, new strains of malware (which pop up around the clock, like you’ve just seen) can slip under the radar.

Some good options include Malwarebytes, ESET, and Norton.

3. Use a VPN

VPNs are online services that hide your IP address, and encrypt your Internet traffic.

Hiding your IP address means you no longer have to worry about anyone using it to find out personal details about you like:

What country and city you live in.
What your ZIP code is.
Who your ISP is.

It also makes it much harder for advertisers to violate your privacy by spamming you with personalized ads.

And by encrypting your traffic, the VPN makes sure that:

Hackers can’t spy on your online communications when you use unsecured WiFi.
ISPs can’t log your browsing history and sell it to third parties.
Governments can’t keep tabs on everything you do online.

Also, iIf you’re a fan of torrenting (who isn’t?), a VPN can make the whole experience much more private.

For starters, the other members of the Swarm won’t see your real IP address – and neither will any copyright trolls who are downloading the same torrent as you.

Besides that, by encrypting your traffic, a VPN makes sure your ISP can’t see that you are downloading torrents. So, they can’t share that info with copyright agencies or the authorities.

Some decent VPN providers include ExpressVPN, Cyberghost, and NordVPN.

4. Try More Privacy-Friendly Search Engines

Google is by far the most popular search engine – it’s the one most browsers default to on installation.

But what is the cost of that convenience?

It’s simple – your privacy.

I already showed you how bad Google is at handling emails and passwords, so let’s take a look at how it deals with privacy rights.

To keep things short – not very well if we consider that the tech giant got fined $57 million in 2019 for keeping its users in the dark regarding data collection. Though that’s nothing compared to the $170 million fine they got for violating kids’ privacy on YouTube.

Oh, and what’s this?

Apparently Google is also part of the NSA’s PRISM surveillance program. Yeah, that pretty much means some NSA agent got to see the weird stuff you google at 3AM.

Yep, you’re definitely better off without it.

The good news is there are some decent alternatives.

searX is one of them. It’s a fully open-source search engine that displays results from tons of places (Wikipedia, Reddit, and – obviously – other search engines). Best of all – you have full control over which places searX gets the data from.

What’s more, searX doesn’t have any ads, doesn’t bug you with search suggestions, and you can even run your own instance of it. Plus, it’s easy to use.

Another good option is Startpage. The results you get are decent, there are no logs or tracking, and Startpage can proxy web pages.

And while there are ads, they aren’t targeted, and don’t confuse you because they are not mixed with the results you get.

5. Use Extensions That Protect Your Data

Here are my personal recommendations:

uMatrix and uBlock Origin – Great script blockers that allow you to choose which background scripts run and don’t run on web pages. An excellent way to protect yourself from malicious scripts that can take over your browser.
HTTPS Everywhere – Automatically upgrades your connections to HTTP websites to HTTPS, if possible. If not, it blocks HTTP requests. Don’t forget – it’s easy to snoop on HTTP traffic since there’s no encryption.
Disconnect – Open-source software that stops thousands of third-party websites from using trackers to violate your privacy. Also makes website load faster.