In today’s digital age, internet privacy is becoming a major concern for many. That’s because most internet service providers (ISPs) have free reign over tracking their users’ online activities. The thought of your ISP knowing every website you visit, search you make, and link you click can be quite unsettling. But who’s to say that this data won’t be used for something else―probably targeted advertising, sold to the highest data bidder, or―worst-case scenario―hacked? Below are a few specific ways to ensure that none of your data falls into the wrong hands. Protect Your Browser with a VPN Using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) encrypts your data, making it near impossible for ISPs to take a peak at your information. Instead of being rerouted from you to your ISP and on to your final web destination like normal, your traffic is rerouted through a VPN—a much more secure server. Use Privacy-Centric Browser/Search Engine Choosing a privacy-focused web browser and search engine will help you regain some of your lost privacy. Essentially, these privacy-centric browsers and search engines are designed to minimize tracking to enhance user privacy. Brave Browser and Mozilla Firefox are just a few examples of private browsers that block ads and trackers. In the same vein, DuckDuckGo, a highly-esteemed private search engine, doesn’t store users’ search history. Don’t Share Private Information Often, the platforms and social media sites where we log into some third-party websites aren’t as private as we would hope. To combat this, consult your privacy settings per site, or app, as needed, and do a simple privacy check.
Understanding ISP Snooping
You might be surprised (or not) that one of your biggest internet privacy risks is your actual Internet Service Provider (ISP). Your ISP can monitor all of your internet activity. They know all of your search queries, the websites you visit, and possibly even your communication in some instances. Ethically, this is a gross invasion of privacy since most people don’t guard themselves against their ISP, even when they have something to hide. (No judgment—we all deserve some privacy.) Beyond the initial invasion of privacy, the implications of this problem are enormous. ISPs often use your data for targeted advertising to get a little more money from you. That knowledge and the fact that they are technically capable of it make your internet experience invasive—downright creepy actually. It’s an invasion of your privacy, but it opens you to potential data and monetary theft. That access to your data, if not protected well, can be stolen or abused—it seems safer that we just disable the functions of having data. A heavily encrypted online experience is the future, and hopefully will be the tradition.
The Role of VPNs in Protecting Your Streams
A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a service that puts a lock on the data you transmit over the web, keeping it masked from anyone hoping to misuse it. The VPN creates a secure, private tunnel between your computer and the web—an “encrypted connection”—by verifying all the data packets that come and go from your device to the internet. This makes for an amazing online shield that can save you from having your sensitive information plucked off by preying rogue agents. Everything from your passwords to your personal information stays confidential. ISPs can use or sell the data they collect about you—and this prevents them from getting any. Just this feature alone can make VPNs well worth the investment. Quite a few VPN services will tell you this. It’s the number one reason for using a VPN. ISPs will use and sell your data. VPN saves you from continually wondering who is seeing where you are online. It keeps your browsing habits private. The no-logs policy should be firmly embedded in VPN services, and for those who have it, it’s a nice checkmark to have. Look—this is obviously the most important feature of a VPN. You need some kind of high-level encryption to accompany the software you use. Anything else, such as a custom DNS, port forwarding options, or VPN kill switches, are nice add-ons but are mostly just tech specs.
Adjusting Your Privacy Settings
Adjusting privacy settings on your devices and applications is an increasingly important part of the world going digital. Many platforms that use cloud storage or act as social media sites feature a plethora of privacy option settings. Generally, the settings involve the sharing of data—so anywhere on the internet a user’s data ‘goes’—and it is important to limit where this data can be sent/received if you want to maintain your privacy. To optimize privacy settings, start with a Google search to find the privacy settings on Facebook, Google, and Instagram. Review the settings currently in place, and think about if you can raise your level of privacy (most people can). Ad blockers and one (or maybe two VPNs) are not a wasted extra, and do consider looking into HTTPS Everywhere and Privacy Badger, for one to create more secure connections, and for the other to prevent tracking. Switch over to using a more ‘privacy-focused’ search engine, to browse the internet, as well. To maintain a level of privacy on the internet, where ‘world-Earth’ and the ‘world-Web’ inherently force individuals to each ‘place,’ will require individuals (or those in a collective) to be ‘proactive’ (as in to take a step first).
Additional Strategies to Shield Your Streams
Using safe protocols, like HTTPS, also secures your information. It helps because it encrypts the data being transferred from your browser to the website. This encryption makes it much harder for someone to read things like a password or a credit card number. Make sure every website you use has a green padlock symbol in the address bar. This simple practice can keep you safe from a lot of potential identity theft. Also, update, update, update! Many updates that are pushed out have to do with security. Keeping all of your applications modern enables this software to protect your data correctly. Also, there is no bug left behind. Many bugs that have been brought to a developer’s attention are fixed up with each and every software update that is rolled out. This ensures that everything is as ready as it can be to continue to fight off viruses and other harmful products of the internet. Finally. phishing and scam knowledge is very good for your brain on the internet. Phishing is a way scammers get you to log in with what you think are your credentials but is really just throwing them into their database. When it is too late, you realize that maybe that email from Yahoo asking for your social security number is faulty. Be a good internet detective when internet browsing!
The need to protect your streams—and yourself—from ISP snooping has become crucial in an age where our online privacy is becoming less and less of a reality. Currently, your internet service provider (ISP) can track every website you visit and all the content you get up to, which eventually leads to building a profile on you, which could lead to targeted advertising and totally removes you of your privacy rights. By taking the steps we go over in this guide, you’ll make sure that no matter what you do, it will be only for your eyes. Like many of the other guides we’ve published, the use of virtual private networks (VPN) will be a surefire solution to keeping your internet traffic encrypted and away from the eyes of your ISP. Using a VPN will not only lock away your data from anyone on the outside looking in, but you’ll also be able to access content that isn’t available in your country. To back up the use of VPNs, using secure browsing practices such as using an HTTP browser or similar (DuckDuckGo), will ultimately thwart any attempt at stealing carrying away with your streams and your private information output. We strongly recommend contributing to the comments section on this one! For those who aren’t up to speed, a little insight from this community will certainly help them in their battle – the time you take to mention what VPN you may recommend or other privacy tactics you have up your sleeve, it could help people in the same situation! With that being said, thank you for reading this article.