10 Elementary Tips – How to Safeguard your Online Privacy
- Salman Ahmed
- October 5th, 2018
Sadly, the online industry is still grappling to make users privacy protected from the attacks of malefic hackers. Alternatively, this might be the case that these tech giants don’t want to provide any solution for online privacy intentionally.
The reason for not providing a coherent solution for online privacy is because they are also in need of data. To run their apps and control the users regarding what they want us to see online.
Well, this is a bitter truth. But now the time has come that we should accept this reality. It seems like all the innovations that are helping the online world to grow exponentially is only making users online privacy more vulnerable.
Every moment, click, sharing, sending emails, and not a single online activities are not safe from being monitored and tracked by multiple social giants, hackers, online molesters, etc.
And for digital nomads, the risk is much greater. Since most of the time they are dependent on Public Wi-Fi, which is open for all. And these online hunters are always ready to hunt users who are very profound to the public network.
However, with every problem, there is always a solution. And being a part of Onlineprivacytips.co, I think this is my job to supervise my audience to help them how to safeguard online privacy without compromising on their online activities.
To all of them who are reading this blog, get yourself ready, because the time has come to take action against online spying agencies who are ruining our online privacy.
Against those who are trying to destroy our children life by engaging them into malicious content. It’s time to make their life hell and prevent them from stealing our online freedom.
One of the childish act I have noticed among my family that they don’t stop of using foolish and simple passwords. It is true that it is very easy on the brain to remember simple passwords like “12345”, “Your name”. OR your favorite “Game of Thrones character.”
However, these simple passwords mean, you are giving open opportunities for hackers. To break down your online accounts. Therefore, create your passwords that include unusual or unique letters, use uppercase letters between the passwords.
Make your habit to change your passwords on a regular basis. Because it helps you to add an additional layer of security.
The reason why I am emphasizing not to use simple passwords, it is because due to hackers are also getting more smart and clever by using different algorithms and coding technique to access online users accounts.
Moreover, if you are freaking out that how the hell you will remember such kind of complex passwords, don’t panic. I have a solution for it too.
Furthermore, if you are assuming that I will tell you to set your passwords on your devices, then you are wrong.
Luckily, there are some reliable password managers available in the market that can help you to fix this migraine of remembering complex passwords.
And these password managers not only help you to remember your multiple complex passwords. But also provide new passwords that can’t break my online dark hackers.
Be a Cookie Monster and much all of them that are stored on your browser. These cookies are paths for websites to stores and collect users data regarding browsing history and online patterns.
And these cookies help websites and social platforms to optimize and personalize their service to you. But here is a huge a risk regarding sharing and selling of users data without letting them know.
Especially after what we went through regarding the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, who really knows to whom our data is shared or sold? This could be threatening for online users.
However not all the cookies are harmful. Therefore, it is hard to recognize which cookie is bad or good for you. For this turn on cookie notification on your browser. In this way when any new cookie comes in to your browser, you will be notified.
VPN service can be your superhero, which immensely helps you to safeguard your online privacy.
With the help of VPN services, you can connect to multiple servers via an encrypted tunnel. Which, makes you total anonymous. And in this way, hackers and different online organizations couldn’t track your online activities. Thus it provides ultimate user shield for their online privacy.
However, the problem is there are hundreds of VPN providers available in the market. And not all of them are reliable and trustworthy to use. Therefore, for this, I did extensive research to help my readers to find out trustworthy services which are mentioned below:
All of these mentioned above VPN providers are trustworthy and provide remarkable service to safeguard your online privacy. One more thing I want to suggest online users, do not use free VPN services at all.
Read: NordVPN vs ExpressVPN Comparison
The reason why I am against these free VPN services is due to multiple DNS leaks, and traffic logs controversies. Therefore don’t risk your online privacy for the sake of saving a small amount of money.
So many of us do not bother to turn-off GPS on our smartphones. And this gives another opportunity for dark entities of the online world to track our location.
This tracking of location helps hackers and social platforms to collect your personal information via Geo-tagging.
Moreover, when you post pictures and different information on social platforms while the location is open, there is no doubt it is far easy to keep track of your memories. But it leads to location information vulnerable.
So I would recommend you that do not keep open your location or GPS except when you need it on a compulsory basis.
Another very effortless but great tip for safeguarding online privacy is through draining out autofill option.
This autofill option is usually automatically enabled on multiple browsers. Which assists you in filling online forms and surveys.
If you have ever noticed while filling online forms that some of your information is already filled in some boxes.
This is how autofill feature works on browsers. Although this feature provides great help in filling out forms. And also allows hackers to track patterns with the help of complex algorithms.
In this way, hackers can easily track and collect, your data without letting you know that leads to risk your privacy.
Therefore, disable autofill option from your browser as soon as possible to get the additional layer to safeguard privacy.
Hush-Hush means go undercover while browsing the internet. To do so, multiple browsers now offer an option for browsing with anonymity such as Google Chrome Incognito feature, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, Brave browser, etc.
Using these features will help you to keep yourself undercover. And also have the opportunity to get the overall list of your browsing history (include where your personal data is used and which website is collecting your data). Since Brave, DuckDuckGo and Ecosia won’t track your online activities.
Moreover, these browsers also offer encrypted browsing. Which means if your online activities track by online hackers. It won’t be useful for them since it will be entirely encrypted.
Most of the online users don’t have any idea what is the difference between HTTP and HTTPS. If you see the only HTTP when entering a site, then you should be worry regarding your online privacy.
HTTP means the site you are browsing is open for all the dark entities of the online world.
The additional “S” letter in HTTP is actually a security layer. That blocks the hackers and those who are looking to tamper a site to steal the user’s information.
Moreover, if you are browsing a website that uses HTTP instead of HTTPS, malicious hackers can install deadly malware on your device.
Moreover, through this malware, they can send you viruses like decompression bomb that could destroy your system.
Therefore, make sure the sites you are surfing start with HTTPS URL. Especially when you have to enter login information to access it.
If you are running your own website, then you should concern about its online security. For this, I read several blogs to keep my website secure from dark online entities.
And after spending almost 24 hours, I find some great hacks to secure my website.
So, if you are the one who wants to secure website, This ultimate guide for website security can be your savor. Especially for the sites that are based on WordPress.
Over the last few years, online social media lose their primary objective to provide a platform where people can socialize. And become a money making monsters since the user’s data is getting precious.
This is why the social accounts that you are using mostly share your data publicly now. Which leads to a massive data breach. However, after the recent incident of data breaches by one of the most popular social platform, finally, governments take action against them.
However, the policies like GDPR is not capable enough of limiting these social giants entirely. From collecting and sharing their data without letting them.
One of the reasons why these recent online policies do not impact greatly is due to vague privacy policy provided by these social giants.
These vague policies are intentionally created to disguise users. And make them allow these platforms to collect their data.
This only thing, which should be appreciated after the Facebook scandal, is that now you can control your majority of data by changing your privacy settings.
On the top of that, avoid sharing sensitive information on different social websites such as your home address, location, phone number, and email id. And if you want to share this kind of information with your friends, I recommend using secure social platforms.
This is as close the main door of your house and leave without locking it. A similar thing we do on our devices, close different apps without logging out properly from it.
In this way when you connect with the internet, the apps, which run in the background, provides the opportunity for hackers to get access to your account by using different algorithms and coding tricks.
Moreover, this what we don’t bother to do especially on our smartphones for the sake of convenience. Also, when you are not log in, these social apps also track your online pattern. Moreover, by tracking these patterns, they target you accordingly.
This happens to me three days ago when I notice this thing. I was standing with one of my friends and searching for Spiderman game on different websites.
Moreover, at the same time I was not using Facebook, but when I opened it after hours ago, It shows different pages that were selling Spiderman game, isn’t it creepy?
So if you don’t want to be tracked and giving you suggestions for your personal desires (such as porn), I would recommend you to log off whenever you leave the site or app.
The last elementary thing you can do to get an additional layer of security to safeguard your online privacy is through deleting spam emails from your account.
This is very common now that you get 100’s of unauthorized emails, which offers suspicious discounts on items which can’t be this cheap on its official website.
And when you in a hurry to find your boss email, it might happen that you accidentally tap or click on these spam email.
When you tap on such spam email, at this moment, you give the access to different malicious hackers, and they may steal your financial data or ask for the hefty amount for not sharing your personal information.
Therefore make your habit of deleting fishy emails from your email account on a regular basis. So whatever email look fishy, delete it on an immediate basis.
Not all the mentioned above tips are only helpful to safeguard your online privacy, but these tips are also helpful to keep your online activity confidential.
This is true that no one wants to sell their online data to the parties that could use it to control the user’s mind and make them their slaves.
Moreover, since we are a part of the democratic state, it is our right to decide what kind of data government agencies can collect or not.
Although the tips mentioned above can help you to safeguard your online privacy to a large extent still no such policy could prevent this painful scenario entirely.