How important it has become to remain active online to pursue day-to-day tasks. Today, our life revolves around the Internet, and we accomplish almost all the jobs through it only.
However, for quite some time now, there have been reports from all over the world about instances of privacy invasion or threat to user's data. Apart from this, the amount of usage of the Internet for online banking has also increased over the years. So, there is also a risk of financial loss when there is any infringement of online privacy, which should have been maintained with superior quality check mechanisms.
Though online privacy has come out as a significant issue, there are still people who feel that the point of invasion of online privacy is not as crucial as it sounds to be and that it will not affect them basically because they are not a "prominent" figure in their society that anyone would think of targeting them for their gains.
How to Hide Your Online Activity & Remain Secured?
Have you ever thought of the security risks associated with the use of the Internet? If no, then it becomes essential for you to think about how to stay protected from all the threats the Internet has to offer.
Yes, it gives threats to our privacy, our identities and reputation, our e-communications, and in particular, to the financial transactions.
So, this is our take on how to hide your online activities and stay protected on the Internet:
- Use Private Email Services
End-to-End encryption is a system of direct communication where the devices transmit encrypted information, which may include messages, images, calls, and videos between two people without any servers' participation.
As setting private servers was a task of tremendous burden, people usually looked down upon the benefits, but with the arrival of private email accounts, you can make use of this email security best practice by using services such as EPRIVO, the most trusted provider of security, and set up your very own free private email account.
- Careful Social Networking
Social networking sites have become very popular to stay in connection with family and friends. We often use these to reach out to new people and becoming friends with them. However, some people may use these platforms with ill intentions to steal your identity and use your information for doing illegal activities.
You need to control the type of information you share on social media with other people and manage the audience you want to interact with. You can control the third-party applications from using your information by accessing your privacy or security settings on social networking sites.
- Secure Devices by Strong Passwords
It is extremely important to protect all your digital devices, including your computers, tablets, smartphones, and any other gadgets having personal data on them with the help of strong passwords. A strong password is one that is unique and contains at least 8-10 characters, including a variety with upper case letters, numbers, and alphanumerical ones.
Without having access to the password, no one can retrieve information or have a look at your online activities. This can be considered as one of the easiest ways to hide your online activity.
- Use Secured Wireless Connections
Try to avoid using public Wi-Fi networks because an unsecured network may leave your personal and financial information vulnerable to be stolen. Even if it becomes important to browse using public Wi-Fi, don't use it for logging into any of your social media or finance-related accounts.
Use a VPN network to make all the data encrypted or else use your phone's network to do important things than using public Wi-Fi networks. You can secure your internet connection by using a PIN or password so that no one can work easily go through your recent online activities.
- Private Browsing Options
The user can make use of the private browsing options which are being provided by the major web searching engines such as Google Chrome.
This should be done because whenever we visit websites, then the website will always ask us to enable the use of cookies. Such security features of private browsing have been introduced in the Safari, Mozilla Firefox engines as well that prevent the capturing of cookies.
To get more secured, you can start using the Tor browser, which is open-source software for enabling anonymous browsing online. It is available for all the popular devices.
- Web Proxy
If there is any vulnerability at the end of your Internet service provider, then the website can again get hold of your IP address, which can, in turn, help it in monitoring your online activity. Therefore, you can use web proxy apps or websites which can help in protecting or hiding your IP address from such websites.
Actually, these websites will act in a way that will prevent you from leaving behind any evidence that indicates that you had visited any particular website by hiding your IP address effectively. Therefore, there will be no imprint left of yours on the web, and hence, your activity can no longer be monitored.
- Privacy Policy of Websites
As per the cyber laws of most countries today, the websites have to make the user aware of their privacy policies. But if we introspect as users, then it will turn out that most of us skip reading the privacy policy of the website and agree to their policies so that we do not have to get into a lot of work.
One of the major strategies that one must use to protect their own online privacy is by reading and understanding the privacy policy of the website. If anything seems to be fishy with the policy, the user always has the right not to use the website or question the website and ask for clarification on the same.
- Make Logging Out A Habit
Many times, just remembering and sticking to the basics is all that is needed to be done in tricky situations. One such thing that you can do to maintain your own privacy is that you should always remember to log out of any of your profiles on the Internet after you have completed using it. It is a simple procedure, but most often, people forget doing it and then face the repercussions.
The Takeaways
The crux of the matter remains that the threat of invasion of online privacy is a real issue in today's world. In various developing countries, due to weak cyber law policies, the vulnerability of any user to these threats is even more.
Thus, one has to ensure their own security and should look forward to following the above-mentioned steps with as much seriousness as possible.
