The world is changing quickly, and your personal information is at risk whenever you go online. Several public and corporate institutions are trying hard to track, monitor, and record your online activity.
In this rapidly evolving environment, the biggest challenge is to protect your online privacy. Cyber-threats are growing daily and if you haven’t prepared yourself well, then you’ll ultimately be falling prey to them.
This is why we have lined up this guide for you to enlighten you how you can restore your online privacy in 2022:
1. Safe and Secure Browsers
For three main reasons, everyone should use a secure and privacy-friendly browser:
- Browsers have a broad attack surface and can be hacked in various ways.
- Most browsers store a lot of private information by default, including your browsing history, usernames, passwords, and autofill information, such as your name, address, etc.
- Browsers usually collect and pass a lot of personal information of its users to third parties, including your location, system settings, hardware,etc.
To counter these reasons, you should opt for a secure browser. Here are a few of the options that you can use:
● Firefox
● Brave
● Tor Browser
● Ungoogled Chromium
● Bromite
You can also use these browsers for accessing sensitive and geo-blocked content. For Example, Tor Browser is widely used by people all around the globe for accessign geo-restricted sites and the Dark Web as well. To avoid phishing and impersonation attacks make sure your email domain is secured with DMARC.
Secure browsers do not provide security for the apps on your device. They only protect the data/ information that is being shared through your browser and they encrypt the traffic that is being passed through them only.
If you want to secure the traffic and information of your apps as well, then the next option in the list is for you.
2. Virtual Private Network (VPN)
A reliable and fast VPN software protects your privacy at all times. When you use a VPN, it hides your actual IP address and masks it with another new IP of the VPN server that you connect with. In other words, it spoofs your location and masks your IP and DNS, so that your ISP or any third-party cannot look at what you’re doing.
A VPN can help you with the following things:
● Protecting your identity by staying anonymous online.
● Accessing gheo-blocked content and apps.
● Safeguarding you from malwares, DDoS and other cyber-threats.
● Hiding your online activity from ISPs, hackers and other spying eyes.
VPNs have many other great features that ensure users’ safety. If you are using a premium VPN, then you would get strong security protocols as well as amazing features for all your needs.
3. Secure and encrypted messaging apps
Online communication should also be secured end to end, because many a times we share sensitive information over messaging apps. Because of worries about the privacy and security of other popular messaging apps, more individuals are opting for safe and encrypted messaging apps.
Apps like Whatsapp, owned by Facebook, collects your information through your Facebook accounts as well as your phone. It is clearly mentioned in their privacy policy. This is a point of serious concern and should be dealt with as soon as possible. You may choose any of the following apps as a secure replacement:
● Telegram
● Signal
● Wire
These are safe to use apps that have great end-to-end encryption and they do not store users’ data. These apps make sure that users’ communication is private and safe and so is the information they share with others.
4. Password manager
One of the most important things while setting up any account is setting up a strong password. But having the same password, no matter how strong it is, on almost every account is not a smart move. It’s better to have a different password for every account, so that if one of your accounts is compromised, the rest shouldn’t face the same fate.
Now the problem of remembering all these passwords arises. It’s understood that a normal person can’t remember different passwords for his numerous accounts. So, what you can do is use a reliable password manager that will store all your passwords and you can easily retrieve them whenever you want.
There are numerous password managers available online but these are the few that we would recommend:
- 1Password
- Dashlane
- Bitwarden
- Zoho Vault
- Keeper
5. Advertisement, tracker, and malware blocker
Ad blockers are extremely important because these advert tracking companies keep a track of your online activity. Through this tracking they crreater customized ads for users. This means that you are being spied on and your online activity is being watched.
Therefore the best thing to do is use an ad-blocker and kick these spying advertisers away. Also, there are malware blockers available that protect users from falling victim to a malware attack. They are extremely useful because malware attacks can be a big blow to you and you should stay protected from it.
6. Antivirus software
One of the most common solutions; known to everyone, is an Anti-virus software. They are specially designed to protect your system from Trojans, Malwares and other viruses, in order to protect your data as well as your system’s performance.
Anti-virus softwares aren’t actually privacy tools, they’re more like protection tools from harmful viruses. However, the latest updates in many of the industry leading anti-virus softwares, some privacy features have been introduced.
The debate about anti-viruses collecting user data is an ongoing thing for a long time now. If we view it in a broader perspective, these softwares collect users’ data in order to make sure that the data transmitted is not infected. This is why their data collection is not a major concern at all.
