While anonymity online is controversial, there are several good reasons why you should care about your personal data being exposed online. Even if you are not involved in illegal or questionable things, it is ok if you do not want information about you to be on the internet. Information exposure can lead to personal harassment, identity theft, cybercrimes and more.
Tips to help you remain anonymous on the internet
Use an encrypted messaging app
Using encrypted messaging apps can increase your privacy and security online. Using the standard unencrypted apps leave you open to monitoring by your carrier, the government and worse of all by hackers and cybercriminals.
Encrypted messaging provides end to end encryption for their text messaging users. They prevent anyone from monitoring your conversations. Some encrypted messaging aps also provide end to end encryption for calls.
They work by preventing everyone, other than the intended recipient of the message from viewing it. Because hackers do not have the encryption key, they will be unable to decrypt the message therefore unable to view its contents which means the information will be kept secure.
Use a VPN
A VPN will encrypt your internet connection to ensure digital privacy and also gives you endless access to online content while you are travelling. The virtual private network works by encrypting all the internet traffic to your device and routing it through a second server to any location you choose. This masks your IP address and third parties will be unable to monitor your traffic.
Because VPN providers use shared traffic on their servers, multiple people use one IP address and this makes it impossible to trace one person’s activity in the traffic.
Alone, a VPN cannot provide you with the privacy and anonymity you need. Not all VPNs will provide you with 100% of that. For some Virtual private networks, the service provider can decrypt and view the message before they send it to the destination.
This is why you should go for log less VPN where the service provider does not store any of your information if you want to stay anonymous online. Make sure to check their terms and conditions before you install a VPN on your device to make sure the providers will not have access to any of your data.
Surf secure websites
Browsing through the internet exposes you to various threats like hackers and malware which can lead to a severe data breach and information exposure. While you are surfing, hackers use techniques like malware installation, cookie theft, eavesdropping, bait and click attacks, key logger attacks and more to get a hold of your personal/private information like login credentials, credit card information and more from your device.
How do you prevent dangerous web-attacks while surfing the internet? For starters, strictly use sites with an encryption. You can tell a site is secure by looking at the URL. Normally, encrypted sites have ‘https’ on their URL which means they will protect data that is being transferred between you and the internet provider so that no third parties can have access. Next, you need to be careful where you tread online. Some sites may have an encryption by may be riddled with malware, which poses a danger to the data in your computer. Stream from legitimate sites like thepirateproxybay to reduce the chances of coming across malware and harmful pop-up ads.
Use your browser incognito
This is one of the easiest privacy options you can implement if you want to stay anonymous online. All popular browsers offer a private browsing mode which when activated, does not store your internet browsing history and cookies on the computer. The internet service provider may still have access to your data; however, it is a step further to staying anonymous online because third parties will not be able to access it.
Delete cookies
Once you visit a website and accept the cookies, they are automatically downloaded from the website and stored into your computer system. What functions do cookies have? They allow websites to remember if you have visited the page before. Some cookies are intrusive they are designed to collect your browsing information to see what you are doing online so the browser can create personalized ad for you. Deleting your cookies is not a one-time job: make it habit to remove them any time you visit websites online to keep your information secure.
