There is a growing number of things that should deeply concern you in today’s world wide web and these 7 ways of protecting your privacy online should be one of them. The days when you could go online worry-free and enjoy browsing the (limited at that time) number of new and exciting information and services you could find are long gone. Our list of the 11 countries with most hackers and cyber criminals should give you one of the important examples, the other one being services and people you voluntarily surrender information that is used to vastly change your online experience.
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Ever since people realized it is a serious source of money, not only for the ever-so-odd-freelancing graduate but more so for the gigantic corporations that already existed before it, as well as the ones that came to life through it, the internet has been a very different place. Nowadays you have to battle endless advertisements, interest-oriented suggestions on everything from what you should watch, listen to and buy to the type of change your life needs and other deep issues and so much more. The problem is that this all was coined as an “enhancing” factor to an already rapidly advancing technology. However, it rarely serves the interests of people who just want to discover better, more efficient or new things online. They serve the entity which pays the most for placement and this is, obviously, the rich corporations, companies and organizations. Before you start moving your mouse cursor to the “close tab” button, give it a moment of thought and don’t just call it a “tinfoil hat” type of thing because we are moving on to the more cyberpunk dystopian part.
Surveillance only means being manically motored for every action of yours to many people. It means to them that there is a way for you to be followed throughout the duration your movement in a given space and your actions being recorded. You wouldn’t really associate it with your daily habit of looking up cute baby animals online but there is a crystal clear fact that your actions online are being carefully surveyed by sites interested in them. For example, a website that sells hammers would really love to know if you looked up something related to hammers online so it could, in one way or another, get the message that they have the new iHammer 8 at their store across to you. This sort of practice is currently one of the less malignant you could come across and most certainly not confined to two or three evil corporations. It is, to a worrying extent, how things work online today.
There are other, far more worrying things that you should protect yourself against but for the sake of keeping things simple and giving you a good start, let’s take a look at 7 ways of protecting your privacy online.
