There are always consequences to using technology, especially when you sacrifice your privacy in return. Amazingly, not only the CIA or FSB, but governments all over the world are working tirelessly to introduce laws giving them access to monitor, store and review every phone call, message or e-mail. This is a cause for concern for anyone who goes online. If you too are concerned about protecting your personal data online, read this article.
Reliability of encryption
The disclosure of the NSA’s plans to eliminate the global encryption standard, along with the threat of the Heartbleed bug, has caused many people to lose confidence in encryption. Do not underestimate the NSA’s willingness to disclose encryption methods. However, for now, encryption is your best defense against constant attacks, OpenVPN and AES keep you safe to a certain extent. Truth be told, encryption is the best choice for securing your online presence against all potential adversaries except the NSA.
Change your password immediately
Ever since the open-source SSL protocol was introduced, the Heartbleed bug has proven to be the most catastrophic of all online security threats. You should keep in mind that SSL is commonly used as the primary cryptographic algorithm on the Internet. It is used not only by VPN companies and cloud services, but also by banks. More than two-thirds of Internet users were affected by this bug, and it went unnoticed for some time, a year and a half to be exact. The bug gave attackers the ability to access sensitive information and steal passwords. The problem was exacerbated by the fact that the affected companies claimed to have fixed the bug, even though there was no fix.
If you’re not sure if the online service you’re using has fixed the problem, it would be wise to ask them. If there is a problem, you should change your passwords immediately.
Protecting Your Browser
There are countless other potential threats on the Internet. As mentioned earlier, there are various organizations other than the NSA that are constantly looking for loopholes to get your data, including advertisers. These advertisers resort to tactics to track your online activities in order to sell you even products that you have no interest in at all. Although most people know how to clear cookies, they are still not immune to these attacks. Most browsers now support anonymous browsing mode, which allows you to be online without saving your history, which blocks advertisers’ cookies. As long as your browser is secure, few people can get through to you through Web tracking technology.
Protecting your email
Most email providers offer an encrypted connection between the sender’s email server and the recipients’ servers. Google has also taken strong measures to address any flaws in their SSL implementations. Nevertheless, it does little good if the e-mail provider hands over your data on a silver platter to anyone interested. Smaller providers are thought to be less likely to encounter this problem, but it’s only a matter of time.
Since the email encryption method doesn’t necessarily encode things like recipient and sender email addresses and subject line, it can still do a lot of damage in the wrong hands. All of this can be prevented by installing special email programs like Pretty Good Privacy.
Protecting your conversations
You should keep in mind that your regular phone calls are not secure, and cannot be protected in any way. Governments around the world are thrilled to record and monitor your phone calls. Even if you buy a burner phone, it turns out to be of little use as much information is still collected in the form of metadata.
If you want to keep your conversations private, you can do so with Voice-Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) with encryption on both ends. VoIP allows you to send messages and make phone calls over the Internet. Not only is it effective, but it’s also quite an affordable means of communication.
As long as you carry your smartphone, you can always be tracked. This technology has nothing to do with GPS, you will be tracked by every phone tower. In this case, your only solution may be to not use your cell phone.
Protecting cloud storage
As Internet speeds have increased, the cost of cloud storage services has begun to fall. But the security of storing your data in cloud storage is a real problem. Most big companies like Amazon, Apple, and Google are losing out here, as they all work together with government security services. But the case is not hopeless; you still have ways to secure your data in the cloud. You can encrypt them manually before uploading them to cloud storage, or you can use cloud storage with automatic encryption.
Use a search engine that’s not watching you
A lot of people are unaware that search engines like Google are watching them. The date and time of a query, the user’s IP address, search words and cookies are all transmitted to special web pages. The owners of these web pages can then use this information to create your brief and approximate profile, which is used to tailor ads to your theoretical needs. In addition, courts and governments around the world can easily access your search terms.
All of this can be avoided by using non-tracking search engines. DuckDuckGo’s popularity has grown tremendously since the NSA openly admitted to spying on the Internet. The number of users of the search engine jumped from two to three million in less than eight days. In addition, such search engines avoid the filter bubble — the search engine’s use of search history and other profile data, resulting in new search terms you may not be interested in. But search engines like YaCy, StartPage and Gibiru don’t create filter bubbles and don’t track you.
Use Firewall, anti-virus and anti-malware software
There is no better way to protect your Internet outlets from such attacks than by using anti-malware, firewall and anti-virus software. However, you should make sure that all of your software is updated in a timely manner. Not only do viruses harm your system, but they give hackers access to your emails, files and passwords. Most importantly, these programs can be installed on mobile devices, which are also vulnerable to attacks and are often defenseless.
More tips and tricks
If you want a few extra tips for protecting your online privacy, you’ve come to the right place. You need to understand that commercial software cannot be trusted in any way. You can start working on the security of your online presence by switching to non-commercial software or a free operating system, as they do not have backup windows built into them by the NSA. Operating systems such as Ubuntu are quite efficient and secure compared to Windows.
On the other hand, you can additionally protect your online presence by using virtual machines. These programs simulate running an operating system as if it were running on a physical hard drive. The best thing about this approach is that the host computer itself is out of the reach of attackers and viruses. In addition, virtual machines can also be further encrypted to provide increased