Technology

How To Protect Your Privacy On The Internet

It is becoming increasingly more difficult to remain anonymous while on the internet. Yet, privacy is of the utmost importance. By allowing the wrong parties to see your IP address, you are putting your own personal safety—and possibly that of other members of your household—at risk.

Sensitive information such as usernames and passwords can all too easily be accessed by hackers who know your IP address and your browsing history. Or, if you are downloading a lot of large files such as movies and games, your internet service provider may use your browsing history against you and throttle your bandwidth.

Here a few ways that you can remain anonymous on the internet and protect your private data.

Disable Cookies

Even if you don’t consider yourself technologically savvy, chances are you know that cookies are used for tracking purposes. They can be used by internet marketers to analyze your purchasing habits and slowly build a user profile that includes not only buying statistics but also any information you have entered, including your home address and phone number.

This personal information can then be sold to third parties. If you want to protect your personal information, cookies can quickly and easily be disabled on your computer simply by accessing the security settings in your internet browser and turning them off.

If you find that you need to enable cookies for certain sites to function properly, be sure to flush them before you close your browser.

Don’t Click On Hyperlinks

Each time you click on a hyperlink, the website logs where you liked from and where you go from there. To prevent this from happening, you should not click on hyperlinks. Instead, move your mouse and hover over the link for a minute.

You will then be able to see the URL of the site that it is linked to. Then, manually type the URL into the address bar in your browser.

Sometimes you may find that traditional measures such as disabling cookies and avoiding hyperlinks just aren’t enough. For a higher level of security, you may want to consider using an anonymous torrent.

A proxy server funnels your internet traffic through a different server so that hackers see an IP address that cannot be traced back to you. Everything you download is encrypted so that it cannot be traced back to your personal IP address either.

This allows you to download torrents—or large files that are downloaded in pieces from various servers—without worrying about your internet service provider throttling your bandwidth or your employer blocking access to certain sites.

Use A Virtual Private Network

A VPN service takes your privacy and security a step further. While a proxy server for torrents only protects the files you download, a VPN secures everything you access on the internet. It still funnels your traffic through a different server, but it encrypts everything you do.

All of your web-based applications will be protected. You can access your e-mail without worrying about sensitive information being intercepted, send instant messages, or Skype without worry about being tracked, or utilize any other third-party applications using web connections. Geographic locations are also kept secure when using a VPN.

 

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