Web

These Online Privacy Hacks Will Help Protect Your Identity

Keeping your online privacy in check is becoming more difficult with each passing year. Cybercriminals are getting craftier and are constantly finding new ways to draw in more and more of new victims into their dark web and they’re constantly succeeding.

There are many ways that you can succumb to having your online privacy compromised and what’s worse, some people don’t even know what’s going on until it’s too late.

That is why everything you do on the World Wide Web should be done with precautionary measures, especially when we’re talking about security and privacy. The level of surveillance and tracking is staggering and it is now incredibly easy to find out pretty much anything about you. If you’re not really keen on someone going through your personal information, they you’ll have to go to a certain length to protect your privacy online. There are different strategies and tools that you can use and we’ll talk about most effective ones.

How Well Do You Manage Your Online Privacy?

We all rely too much on the fact that once we set our usernames and passwords on every account we make, we’re covered when it comes to privacy when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. Getting to our confidential information has never been easier for hackers, especially if you’re not being careful with your passwords and always use same ones for different accounts.

One of the things that you should do if you’re on the quest to improve your privacy is do a regular “cleaning” of the data that piles up in your devices over time. Get rid of your history, cookies, emails you don’t need and spam to make sure that there isn’t any unnecessary junk that could be used for tracking your every move.

When was the last time you checked your privacy settings on social networks or anywhere else, for that matter? Privacy settings are constantly being tweaked and improved and if you don’t follow up on the changes that are happening, you can easily put yourself at risk unknowingly. Check the privacy policy of any account you have and use constantly, so that there aren’t any nasty privacy surprises. Also, if you’ve got profiles that you’re not really using, be sure to delete them, because they can pose a threat for your identity and through them, hackers can get a hold of precious information you don’t want to share.

Use a Virtual Private Network (VPN)

Using a VPN service is probably one of the best ways to keep your privacy on point as much as it is humanly possible. Virtual private networks were created for the sole purpose of keeping you under the radar of surveillance and making you virtually untraceable.

The main role of VPNs is to hide all activity that is coming from your devices and some of the best providers offer their users military-level data encryption that is very difficult to trace and crack. When you’re using a VPN, you basically disappear from the map, because your IP address is masked and is constantly transferred from one server to another across the globe. When you want to know if you’ve found a good VPN company, just check how many servers they have and where they’re located. Usually, there will be hundreds of servers worldwide like on Nord VPN proxy list and then you’ll know that the provider is worthy of your attention. What’s more, VPN allows you to get over any geo-blocking that you may encounter, which means any content or website that you might need are completely available to you, because your virtual private network got rid of any virtual boundaries that might have existed. Installing a VPN on your devices pretty much guarantees getting your internet privacy to the next level and very quickly.

Onion Routing

The Onion Router is one of the more extreme ways to move around the internet but it is perfect for those who really need to get out of sight when they’re on the web. Onion routing serves as a tool for all those activists, journalists and investigators of any kind that are in need to dive deep into the internet and see its more objective and often, darker side. The name symbolizes that all the data coming from you are packed in layers of encryption, just like they’re in an onion. As the information travels to onion routers all over the world, encryption falls away layer by layer until the final destination of the data is reached. Onion routing is very efficient in hiding your identity, but it does come with its fair share of trouble, so make sure you’re aware of the risks before you get into the onion routing head first.

Your online privacy is one of the most important things to keep in mind whenever you connect to the web and you shouldn’t take it lightly. Take a closer look at your privacy and make an effort to improve it in any way you believe is best for you and remember that you should constantly check on it, as that will give you better insight on how it can be upgraded.

Thomas Milva

Thomas spent his whole life in America, though his family originally came from Northern Italy four decades ago. He has been both an accomplished Information Security Analyst for a few years now and a digital writer at We Follow Tech. Thomas is 28, lives in Baton Rouge, hates being called Thomas, and prefers being called Tom at any time.

Next The Artificial Intelligence Singularity and the Collapse of the World's Money System »

Previous « Scholarship seeks outstanding female students in Middle East, Africa for competition

View Comments

mialby.10 says:

February 6, 2017 at 9:37 AM

I really can just recommend people to use vpn service. There are couple of really good providers out there, such as Traceless VPN or mullvad, offering strong protection at affordable price.