Throughout history governments have an amazing record on massive citizen observation in order to retrieve information for their benefit. The more information you posses the more you are able to control your people. But is it ethical? Why should they be listening to our calls or reading our email?
We deserve our right to privacy and safety, in our person and our belongings, your information shouldn’t be known to anybody who has nothing to do with our data.
Remember, the internet is not a safe place, and it really isn’t, even if your internet use is basic, you are giving out tons of information to the outer world, and you never know who is watching.
This little guide will help you surf through the web safely and give you a little introduction for you to do further research, even though the recommendations here are almost air-tight for you to remain unseen on the internet.
Passwords
For a very long time humans have been using many different methods for identification, from ID’s to signatures to the most common way to identify yourself when interacting with a computer, a password.
A dictionary attack is one of the principal attacks passwords have to live through everyday, which consist on testing a finite quantity of words and word combinations in order to get a match.
Computer passwords are easy to break, and they are specially breakable if you happen to use any of this things as an entry word by a dictionary attack:
- Words in a dictionary.
- Your user name.
- Your real name.
- Any name.
What your password should have:
- Your password should be at least 8 characters long.
- Must contain letters and numbers.
- Must contain Caps.
- Should have symbols dividing the words you use.
If you want to learn more about password security and some better uses you should see this video.
Other recommendations for keeping your passwords safe:
- NEVER, and I repeat, never give your password to anybody.
- Make your password something you can remember, NEVER write a password down, you never know where that piece of paper will end up.
- Make your password difficult for others to guess.
Browsing
The main vessel we use for going through the web is our browser, on which we always want to feel comfortable. There are great browsers out there and they seem to always be improving. But how safe is our information when we are browsing through the internet? Who is tracking us? and how much information is the browser developer company getting of me?
Publicly Mozilla Firefox has been one of the principal “mainstream” browsers that actually gives an alternative for privacy. For a few years, they have been looking to keep your browsing environment as safe as possible. Here are some ways in which Firefox has a great control of your privacy:
- As a user you have wonderful control of your cookies and cache, all the information a web page will store on your computer.
- Firefox will automatically block insecure or mixed content from secure web pages.
- Phishing and Malware protection, Firefox has built-in protection to keep you safe online from phishing schemes. This article has a more detailed view of how they work.
The web browser for keeping to yourself by excellence is indisputably the Tor browser which claims to “Contain everything you need to safely browse the internet”
Tor browser is a group of servers that allow people to connect through a series of virtual tunnels instead of doing a direct connection.
This browser is made specifically for privacy, securing that no webpage will store any information you provide, and by simulating a physical change of your location you can rest assured you will not be tracked.
There is some drawback by using this browser, the loading speed of many web pages will be considerably increased since the browser has to transfer your request through another computer to make sure you are not tracked.
Tor should be used only when complete anonymity is required. Using this browser alone will not assure your security, since hackers can still get to you through the browser an extra layer of security is recommended, a VPN, which we will be explaining soon.
Don’t give information to just anybody who asks
The internet is full of forms to fill. How often do you receive a pop-up forcing to like a web page on facebook or provide your email to be able to see the content? You should instantly leave that webpage. They are not providing any certificate of how your information will be stored, or assuring they will not sell it to a 3rd party.
Always be careful when leaving your information in a web page. Not everybody on the internet is good people.
Search engines:
According to NETMARKETSHARE 75% of the internet conducts all their searches through google. and why wouldn’t you? If google is providing you with a whole lot of free software, that doesn’t mean that is completely free of charge, maybe Google’s principal business entry is not their services, It’s you, and an analysis they have been building up through the years you have been surfing through the web. This information is so valuable for so many businesses and it’s reshaping the world and the way we interact with it.
Even though google is not explicitly selling your personal information (not even your name), you are being tracked at all times and you should be conscious of it.
As a personal recommendation, I’ve been using an alternative search engine called DuckDuckGo. Its privacy policy basically consists of this:
https://duckduckgo.com/privacy
It is a great browser, it’s customizable and completely free of charge(Unlike google) unless you’d choose to donate.
In the last few months I’ve been using this search engine I haven’t required any other portal for getting through the internet, and I consider myself as a heavy search engine user by doing around 50–70 queries per day.
VPN
A Virtual Private Network, better known as VPN is great tool to keep your privacy while you are online. If you’re at home or at a coffee shop or at an airport, if you want to be safe while you are connected to the internet you want to have a secure connection.
A VPN allows your computer to send and receive data securely, by using a series of protocols to ensure your safety.
Some of the basics characteristics of a VPN are:
- Authentication, this is really important because if you are sending secure information to an unknown person then all of your efforts will be useless.
- Integrity, a VPN does a hash on your information to secure it from Man In The Middle Attacks.
- Confidentiality, all the information you send through a VPN will be encrypted, this will ensure that only the people who you want to read a message will be able to read it.
Here’s a list of some recommended VPN from our friends at Torrentfreak
Who is tracking you?
Even though we don’t notice that we are being watched, most of the web pages we visit tend to have some kind of tracking built into their code.
A simple way of seeing how much a web page is getting of you would be by doing a simple browser test from Panopticlick .
As a personal recommendation, I have been using for a while a browser extension called Privacy badger for Firefox which also works on Google Chrome and Opera which purpose is to block advertisements and tracking cookies that do not respect the Do not track setting on the browser. So far It has been a wonderful and simple to use tool, It automatically blocks the little parts of a webpage that is tracking you and gives you a heads so you know what kind of page you are visiting.
Social networks
Our passive aggressive friend, every has a favourite social network, like, why wouldn’t you? There are so many tastes and flavors for everybody who want’s to immerse themselves into the world wide web. But how much information are they getting of you? Do you want everybody to know your habits, your family and friend connections, your interests or anything else you choose to share with the world?
Remember, you are in the internet, and you never know who’s watching. Therefore you should always think twice before posting.
Remember privacy is for everyone and should always be respected, if the internet is not providing you with safety, you must implement it yourself.
Like Edward Snowden Said — “If you think privacy is unimportant for you because you have nothing to hide, you might as well say free speech is unimportant for you because you have nothing useful to say.”
https://www.wired.com/2012/01/computer-password/
https://www.cs.umd.edu/faq/Passwords.shtml
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/desktop/trust/
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products/firefox/protect-your-privacy
https://www.torproject.org/about/overview.html.en
https://duckduckgo.com/privacy
