How to protect your privacy on Internet?
Recently I noticed that my ISP started injecting ads on all non-secure (http) pages on Internet. I noticed its being done by various ISP’s all over the world or other middlemen who basically has access to your connection between your browser and the server you are trying to connect with.
This was unacceptable to me and hence I decided to block these ads on my connection on my level. I did that and I realised the same problem is being faced by many people worldwide and hence here I am writing a solution on how you can protect yourself from being snooped by any middlemen while also ensure that the resource comes directly from server that you are expecting it to be from.
I am going to explain about https, browser extensions and VPN in a simple language below so that even the non-geeks could understand the solution.
Some temporary fixes…
A temporary fix would be manually use https (instead of http) requests wherever possible. No one between the server and your browser can modify any traffic between your browser and server if it is served over https. If you are reading this inside chrome browser, notice how medium’s site has a green lock in the top bar and https:// written in green color before the domain. This green lock indicates that the connection is secure and encrypted between your browser and the medium server. The ISP or any other network middlemen will not be able to modify any content on these pages.
Browser Extension to the rescue (well almost!)
There are browser extensions available for most desktop browsers that would automate this switching of http to https for us. (Links: Chrome/Firefox) But sadly, the truth is not every website on earth supports https as of today. I am a web-developer and I understand that enabling https on websites require a little extra effort and cost sometimes and hence not all websites support it yet (this is changing fast but is still a long way).
Well this currently means that this is not a 100% secure solution but it would work at-least on the websites that support it. But the problem doesn’t end here. Mobile browsers don’t have such extensions, moreover every new app now uses an in-app web-view (think of this as a separate browser embedded inside the app) which wont let you modify the URL’s also, forget about installing such extensions there. And there are also those apps on your phone for which you have no control at all.
Virtual Private Networks
Another solution is to redirect all your traffic through a VPN or Virtual Private Network. VPN is like a private tunnel over your current internet connection to your VPN provider (third party) and then you basically use third party’s internet connection to browse the internet. Please note that this would slow down your connection a bit as the data needs to travel this extra path now.
Because nothing is really free in this world, if it’s free then probably you are the product for them!
There are many free and paid VPN providers available over the internet (and also some free/paid browser VPN extensions as well). Also if you plan to use free VPN service, make sure that you trust the provider. Because nothing is really free in this world, if they are providing it for free then probably you are the product for them. There is a chance that your VPN provider can now track your internet activity instead.
PS: Opera is now providing free VPN in both its mobile and desktop browsers.
PPS: If you own a website, its good time to shift it over to https to safe-guard your visitors and your website. There are many articles available over Internet and you can also do it for free now. But incase you are not technically aware and need consulting for your website, connect with me.
Overall it is a shitty game that ISP’s are playing with us and shifting to https is the only good way out of it. Let’s just hope that website owners now start shifting their websites to https soon. That’s the only way we can ensure, we can be safe over Internet.
