No matter how much or how little you tend to use the internet, whether on a professional level or personally in your private life, you need to make sure that you are doing whatever you can to keep yourself as secure and as private as possible. The truth is that it is now harder than ever to make sure of this, but that doesn’t mean that it is impossible or even all that difficult to be able to keep your privacy and your security in tact. As long as you focus on it in the right way, and make a point of taking some basic precautions, you should find that you are able to improve these things much more easily than you might have thought possible. In this post, we are going to take a look at some of the essential ways in which you might want to improve your internet privacy and security, so let’s take a look at what they might be.
Avoid Google
To many people, this might sound impossible, but the truth is that you rarely need to actually use Google if you don’t want to. Google is one of the worst offenders in the world for privacy breaches, so you need to make sure that you are avoiding using their products and services as much as you possibly can. If you are wondering how this might be possible, it’s actually fairly simple and straightforward. First of all, you don’t have to use their search engine. There are plenty out there, and if you want to find one that doesn’t track you around the web as Google does, then you should consider using DuckDuckGo. That is just as effective at searching the web, but has none of the added tracking cookies, so you can browse and search privately.
Of course, avoiding Google also means not using Gmail, and not having an android phone. These things might sound impossible to some people, but as long as you are keen to have more privacy they are going to be important. In essence, you just want to make sure that you are using Google as little as possible. That might mean that you need to make some changes, but if you can’t cut it out of your life entirely just yet, then don’t worry too much. You can always do it gradually over a longer period of time.
Browse Through A VPN
If you don’t currently use a Virtual Private Network (VPN), then this is one of the first changes that you are going to want to make in order to have much more privacy online. At the moment, when you are online, anyone with sufficient skills and software can find out your IP address, which basically tells them where you are in the world, down to the house you are living in. Clearly, that is anything but private, and you will want to make sure that you are doing something about it if you want to browse more privately. The best way to do that is to get your hands on a VPN, which is going to mean that your IP address is masked, and therefore that you are browsing privately and securely.
It’s interesting to note how a VPN works. If you look at something like this betternet review, you will see that it can be an effective means of browsing privately, but how it makes sure of that is interesting. Basically, a VPN reroutes your connection to the internet via a number of different points, so that nobody knows where you are coming from. They could work out that you are using a VPN, but not where you actually are, which is the important thing.
The Issue With Social Media
Again, if you are keen to be as private as possible online, you will really want to think about keeping your social media usage to a minimum. There are a lot of ways you can do that, and once you do so you might find that it is easier than you had thought it would be, and that you are not going to have to worry about not having it in your life. The worst offender is Facebook, so that is the first place to start, but many others track you around the internet too, and it is best if you don’t use them at all. That might seem extreme, but it is absolutely a good way to do it if you want to be as private as possible online.
(Cover Image Source – CCO Licence)