Right here, right now, is the golden age of technology. Anything that we can ever want is in the palm of our hands. We can cross millions of miles on land in just a few hours and talk to someone located at the opposite end of the world within a few seconds.
While there’s no doubt that technology has made our lives easier, at the same time, there are some repercussions as well. Probably the most significant of them is towards our online privacy. If we aren’t focused on protecting our online privacy, our lives will soon become an ATM without security that anyone can exploit.
Let’s learn today about some of the measures you can deploy at your end to enhance your online privacy.
Virtual Private Network
VPN is probably the most effective way to secure your online privacy. As it creates an encrypted tunnel between your device and destination, your personal information and data will remain hidden from anyone who tries to access it. Almost all top premium VPN providers offer military-grade encryption sufficient to ensure your digital anonymity and privacy.
There’s absolutely no doubt that subscribing to a good VPN can help you achieve online privacy, but it can also provide you access to unlimited geo-restricted streaming services from across the globe. If you are not a big fan of third party VPN providers, you can take advantage of Google VPN as Google itself offers its VPN service for an extra layer of security on Google devices.
Whether you are working from home or traveling due to Covid-19, there’s plenty of things that you can do with a VPN. If you’re stuck at home due to COVID, definitely read about the advantages of using a VPN during work from home.
Strong Passwords
Develop a habit of using strong passwords for all of your online accounts. Make it unique and difficult so that no one can guess your passwords. Always make sure not to use a birthday, age, or address as a password. They are straightforward to guess.
Bring some special characters or randomness to make your password unique. Also, never use the same password again for any other account. Even if your one account password is compromised, we don’t want to see all the accounts getting hacked. To keep track of your different passwords, using a password manager is ideal.
With a password manager into the equation, all you have to do is remember its password, and it will remember the rest of the passwords for you.
Two Factor Authentication
To understand it better, think of it as an additional lock you install on your door despite the original or default. Once enabled, this feature will give you an extra security layer for protecting your online privacy.
To use it, you will have to register a device with your online account. Once you try to log into your account, this feature will send you a code on the device you registered for earlier. This is one of the best ways to prevent any unauthorized access to the account.
Even if someone has gotten access to your online account details and tries to access it, they will be asked to enter the 2FA code that you will receive on your account. Upon receiving the code on your device, not only will you know that there’s unauthorized access, but it is also an indication that it’s the right time to reset the account log-in information.
Security updates
That annoying and irritating software or security update requests that you frequently receive on your devices, yes, you should install them immediately.
Like living creatures, technology is also evolving regularly. While the threats are growing, so are the counter-attacks. Every time a software or security patch is released to release the latest wave of cyberthreats that can seriously damage your online privacy, they shouldn’t be ignored and should be installed on priority.
Suppose your software or device is updated with the latest security updates. In that case, the chances of your online privacy getting compromised are close to zero, but if you keep on ignoring them, then soon, not only your privacy but your data or information will be at greater risk.
Prevent Phishing Attacks
Not every attack on our privacy will be in the form of malware or hack. Sometimes, we are tricked into giving out our personal information willingly. These attempts or deceptions are carried out via email, text messages, or even phone calls.
These impersonators will try to gain your trust to obtain your personal information such as account username or password, social security number, etc. A grammatical error in messages, email from a weird domain, or links to incorrect websites are few ways to catch these impersonators.
Encrypted Apps for Messaging
To secure your messages’ contents to protect your online privacy, it would be a wise decision to use an application that supports end-to-end encryption, such as WhatsApp.
Although the messages’ content is encrypted and hidden from anyone trying to take a look at them, there’s still a lot you can tell about someone by just looking at the outside of the envelope. If online privacy matters to you, we’d suggest that you don’t make a backup of your data on either iCloud or Google Drive. The backup is not encrypted, unlike the messages in WhatsApp, and can be read by anyone.
Secure Browsers
While applications make our daily lives more accessible, there’s no doubt that they are learning a lot about us due to all the different types of services they have access to. A harmless application like Calculator – could be selling out the data it can gather from your phone. On the other hand, browsers can’t access as much information as an app can, so they are ideal to use privacy-wise.
Even if you implement half of the suggestions mentioned above, you should be able to secure your online privacy from any cyber threats.
There are few more methods not listed here that can give you an edge concerning your online privacy. Read about the nine essential tools for online privacy to step up your online privacy game a notch.