Edward Snowden’s revelations that everything we do online is being tracked by someone, somewhere, be that the NSA, Google or some other companies who build dossiers on us and then sell that information to other parties, means that we all need to be circumspect about what we do, say and where we go online.
Big Brother (and several smaller ones) are watching. If you’re one of those who think that since you’ve nothing to hide, you’ve nothing to fear – think again. Since everything we do online is tracked, it allows various entities to build a profile of who we are, our credit score, what interests us, what ailments and diseases afflict us, where we go online in the small wee hours of the night.
I bet that some of that information you would prefer other people not know about. What’s worse is that that very information can be sold to third parties without our permission or knowledge. Very personal and private information about us is traded like commodities on an open exchange.
Are you really ok with that?
Check out this documentary series that looks at what levels of surveillance are in play, who’s watching you and why, to learn more.
We’re often told that we need to give up some of our liberties (and that includes privacy) so that the government can keep us safe from those who would want to harm us. I’ll let Benjamin Franklin address that paradigm:
Protecting Yourself Online
We all do two things online daily – read and send emails and surf the internet. We can stop snoops from reading our emails if we use email encryption.
Using the Tor browser gives some measure of online anonymity. It also opens the door to the Dark Internet, that section of the web that is not on public view. While this was originally created to aid whistleblowers to release information pertinent to the public interest anonymously and secret agents to communicate surreptitiously, it is also home to some more nefarious and criminal elements.
And maybe you don’t want to be exposed to that or to have family members have access to it.
So the way to become anonymous online without using Tor is to use a Virtual Private Network (or VPN). This randomises the route taken by data between your web browser and the site(s) you’re visiting. Your actual IP address is never used on the destination site. It’s the way to protect what you do online from prying eyes.
For a few days only, the Hide My Ass Virtual Private Network are offering a 50% discount on their fees. The fee is normally $9.99/mth ($119.88/yr) but they’re offering access for $59.88 right now. The downside is that you have to pay annually (a smaller discount is also available on the half-yearly fee option). The upside is that the 50% discount carries into future renewals. So this is a 50% lifetime discount.
A VPN also allows you to pick your entry point to the internet so you can appear to be in a different country. It allows you to access sites and services that might be blocked in your own territory.
If online privacy is a concern for you, then this is the time to start using a VPN.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has more information about online privacy issues if you want to delve deeper into the subject.
Learn how to encrypt your emails.
All the best,
Gary Nugent
P.S.: Don't forget, if you want to create an internet income of your own, here's one of my recommended ways to do that:
Tagged with: email encryption • Hide My Ass • online privacy • online surveillance • Tor browser • virtual private network • VPN
Filed under: Online Security
Interesting read. Especially today when I found out that someone in Taiwan tried to hack my Facebook account. I think it’s time I change all my passwords and also use a VPN as you suggested. Better safe than sorry! I’m not comfortable with random people having access to all my info.
Thanks for sharing this!
Hi Liz, it’s not a bad idea to periodically change your passwords. Some sites will prompt you to do this on a regular basis, others won’t. If you have a lot of passwords, then if you’re not already using LastPass, I can recommend that as a password management tool. Even better, it’s a free tool.
Gary
I find this being very interesting. There are no easy solutions. Everything we do today, from using our phones to computers like you say is being tracked… The VPN can sure help some, but I feel that there’s a lot more to it.
Everybody should have right to their own privacy… sadly that’s not the case anymore.
Vicky
I think, Vicky, after the Edward Snowden revelations that people became much more aware of just how much we’re all tracked and monitored online. The “if you’ve nothing to hide, you’ve nothing to fear” brigade are grossly naive. Nobody knows who’s going to be in government in 20 years time and how they’ll use the data collected on people over the years. Or imagine if you looked for information on some medical condition, simply out of curiosity, and at some point in the future you’re denied medical insurance for that condition because the insurance company says you must have had a reason for looking it up so to cover their own potential losses, they won’t give you cover.
GCHQ over in the UK are as bad as the NSA (and mention of those institutions here has probably triggered a flag somewhere!) in tracking people online.
All we can do is make ourselves as anonymous online as possible. It doesn’t mean we’re up to no good. It just means we don’t give permission to agencies to track us without our consent.
Gary