How to be completely Anonymous on the internet in 2021

This is a battle for our online privacy

A survey made last year and discovered that 69% of data breaches were related to identity theft and the tool may be used to steal your identity is the internet. you enjoy Free Wi-Fi at coffee shops , at bars, libraries, at airport, and other public places. it seems very dangerous to use Free wi-Fi in public place. And even if you are not using public Wi-Fi still you are not safe in your own network. let’s dig into this.

Top List of Firms Tracking You Online

During your regular browsing session there are thousands of third party trackers are running and continuously trying to snatch your data or attack your device with malware you are being tracked by companies even if you have never signed up for their services and that name of the companies are Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Verizon, and Amazon.

Most Common Trackers Found on the Top Sites

Companies are everywhere collecting your personal data and storing them for their profits. The most obvious information being collected through social media. Everything you post publicly or make some post private it’s being stored and analyzed they are not having our social media data they have our digital records too. they have records of everything from where you buy, everything you watch , where you go, what you search on the internet and what happens at your house. even your physical movement being tracked by these giant company. All of this data being used to create profiles of us by using unique algorithms on your data and categories you in following categories

They are able to create marketing strategies directly to you. storage of this data becoming profitable enterprises on the planet. always think before whatever you post on social media. Also, it’s almost impossible to know if user data is being misused within company bounds or in business-to-business interactions.

last year we witnessed the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which a third party company was able to the gather personal information of millions of Facebook users and use it in political campaigns.

Earlier this year, both Amazon and Apple were reported to be using human annotators to listen to personal conversations, recorded via their respective digital assistants Alexa and Siri.

Even if you use private mode on your browser with a VPN can easily identified and tracked. your VPN providers know exactly the same information about you that your ISP does. VPN only change your IP address and make it difficult for your ISP to see what you are visiting. VPNs are useful to bypass geo blocking or throttling by your ISP but they don’t give you any anonymity. modern trackers don’t even need to know your IP address to track you and your Identity.

Anonymity is not for criminals or any individuals it’s important if you don’t want a record of your online activity like your interests, preferences, searches, emails, messages, contacts, browsing history and social media activity. online anonymity gives you highest level of privacy protection on the Internet. most privacy tools are focused on encryption like VPN and it is great but encryption only protects the content but in modern surveillance is the metadata that’s most valuable things. based on your metadata is who you talk to when where for how long how often on what device and what software do you use

in this article you will learn what it means to be anonymous on the web how to use essential anonymity tools and you will learn some tips and habits to protect your online anonymity and nobody knows who you are. so let’s talk about one by one those anonymity tools VPN, TOR, WHONIX & TAILS.

☞ VPN

A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is an internet security service that allows users to access the Internet as though they were connected to a private network. A VPN creates a private “tunnel” from your device to the internet and hides your data by applying Encryption techniques. Some of the most common reasons people use VPNs are to protect against snooping on public WiFi, to circumvent Internet censorship, or to connect to a business’s internal network for the purpose of remote work.

Here are a few of the most common reasons to use a VPN

1. Protection over public WiFi
2. Remote work
3. Freedom from censorship in oppressive states
4. Location anonymity

What are the downsides of a VPN?

A VPN service provider doesn’t guarantee of your security. users can only feel secure with a VPN if they trust the VPN provider. Many VPN provider could sell their users’ personal information or leave them open to attacks. VPN service providers are monitoring the data from their users for their own benefits in that way your communication is not all private but be monitored by service providers.

☞ What is TOR

The Onion Router (TOR) is a free and open-source software for enabling anonymous communication. It is designed to stop people tracking your browsing habits including government agencies and corporations. The name (The Onion Router) refers to the way that Tor protects your data by wrapping it in multiple layers of encryption like an onion.

Tor is an overlay network that runs on the regular Internet the goal of the Tor network is to make it impossible to trace traffic back to its origin it achieves this by encrypting and rerouting your traffic through three independent Tor relays or hops none of the relays knows the full length of the tor traffic so there is no single point of failure these relays are run by volunteers from all around the world and tor browser chooses and arranges them randomly infrequently on average every 10 minutes or each time you restart tor browser you get a new set of relays giving you a completely new identity tor browser is the easiest tool to get access to the Tor network you can download it for your operating system by clicking here.

What are the downsides of a TOR?

1. Slow speed:- Since traffic goes through so many relays, there is often a delay in content. In particular, photos and videos have trouble loading even if you have fiber broadband.
2. Legal Trouble:- The Tor browser can be used by anyone. If someone is participating in illegal activity and you’re the exit relay, the traffic will be tracked to you. Governments are also keep a close eye on Tor user.
3. Web Services Blocked:- Many services directly block access to Tor or Others may allow access but you have to pass through CAPTCHA that are needed to enter the site.
4. Tor is running on your main operating system and if you download some thing from web and execute on you host operating system then it leads to compromise your data.

☞ WHONIX OS

WHONIX is a Linux based operating system made to to run inside the Virtual Machine. that means you can keep your host system and run WHONIX inside it in a virtual environment. whole operating system is routed through TOR network every application you run inside it is connected to TOR network by default. WHONIX is a another security layer on top of the TOR browser that protects your main system. in case if tracker or malware escape TOR browser it will still trap inside the TOR network on your WHONIX machine and it will not get access to your main Host operating system or your real IP address. if you have already know about how to run VM ware or Virtual Box then it will be very easy for you to setup WHONIX OS.

What are the downsides of a WHONIX OS?

1. Complicated to setup and requires administrator/root privileges.
2. WHONIX need modern hardware that supports visualization technologies.
3. If your host machine is ever compromised, all the stored personal information and your internet browsing activity could be discovered easily.

☞ TAILS Linux OS (Incognito Live System)

If your goal is to leave no trace of any activity then choose Tails. Tails is a live operating system that runs separately from your host operating system. tails directly boots from a USB Drive on a machine without the presence of the host operating system. tails leaves no trace on the device and all traffic is routed through the Tor network the installation process is even simpler than the WHONIX.

Tails has a lot of use cases especially if you are using devices that you don’t own like in a library or your friends Laptop. tails gives you an option to create a persistent encrypted storage which is going to securely store a files. if somebody obtains physical access to your USB Drive they will be able to see there is a tails persistent storage they will not be able to decrypt your files. running tails eliminates the attack surface over your host machine.

Conclusion

we have seen many techniques and tools are available to hide a person’s identity while browsing the internet. also we have seen the pros and draw backs of all above mentioned tools. and we can say that TAILS as it gives you the complete Anonymity and security for data transmission, privacy of identity and the physical security.

Some Important Tips

1. if you want to write an Anonymously comment or blog post don’t directly type inside the website write it into notepad and then copy paste it into the website cause many scripts can easily identify your keystrokes in similar way the way you walk on the road. also change your writing style and speed as much as possible.
2. Clean your Internet browsing history after every use.
3. Always check authenticity before you fill any google forms.
4. At least try any one Linux distros before you die.
5. you can use following extension to protect your privacy online Privacy Possum, Disable JavaScript, Privacy Badger, uBlock Origin, HTTPS Everywhere, DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials.
6. privacytools.io protect your privacy against global mass surveillance. Here you find an alternative for your daily driver.
7. Mobile manufacture company tracking your location by embedding spy ware into their software, so the best alternative is use of custom ROM. best about custom ROM is that you can run without any Google apps installed giving yourself complete control over your phone. you can find more about custom ROM on XDA Developers.

Thanks, everyone for reading :)

Happy Learning ;)