Protect your online privacy

The recent announcement of WhatsApp privacy policy and the consequence of severe backlash on the tech giant pushed back the policy rollout by three months to May 15. Which coursed millions of users to search for alternatives like telegram and signal.

Big fives are every where (image source:unsplash)

With the advancement of technologies, privacy of the users becoming increasingly vulnerable.

I am Musab Mahmood , a computer science undergraduate from the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. This is my first blog on medium, and my motive is to make the public aware of internet privacy, security and digital well-bieng .

Privacy and security are two distinct parts, we will discuss them in future blogs. In this blog, we will be concerned about privacy.

All though all tech companies are running on the promise of protecting your data, they are heavily dependent on data. From the game you play on your mobile and to the Calculator app which asks you unnecessary permission in installation, all are transferring data to big companies, because those big companies are always try to monetize from the little chance they get. The big five are (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google) everywhere from a simple web search, communication, shopping, and working. They try their maximum to influence society.

So, in this article, we will discuss some simple alternatives we can make to protect our virtual privacy although it is not a hundred percent possible. The best way to do that is isolating your internet activities such that for every service we can have unique providers as much as possible.

So, let us discuss some simple tips you can start with.

1. Search engines

The easiest way to track someone is with their use of search engines. For search, we have plenty of alternatives, like DuckDuckgo, searX, and more. Although the search results are not giving user experience like Google search, if you are concerned about privacy, It is a better choice.

2. Browsers

When talking about browsers it is the best way to go with Tor browsers if you are overly concerned about your privacy, but it is slow compare to other browsers. Another better choice is Firefox. The common feature of the above two is they create new sessions every time you start a new activity. I have read some articles about Bromite for android, but I personally have not used it.

3. Let us move to the world of PWA

Progressive Web Apps are web apps that use emerging web browser APIs and features along with traditional progressive enhancement strategy to bring a native app-like user experience to cross-platform web applications. These give a user the same experience as a native app, but with PWA s your phone data is better protected, unlike in the native app. And remove all the native apps which you do not extensively use

4. Chatting

At the moment most of our communication is centralized to a mainstream social media application. There are lots of alternatives, among signal is highly recommended open-source project. They do not store data about you unless if they need it for a session. And they use your local storage, unlike a cloud host. If you go further there is a highly secured chat app which I recently came to know. They say it gives you total anonymity. It works over TOR and fully encrypted, it is BRIAR

5. Application firewalls

These firewalls help to enhance your privacy more. The best choice for android is NetGuard which I have personally enjoyed using for more than 8 months(use lockdown for IOS). NetGuard is free and open-source. With this application, you can allow apps that truly need an internet connection and you can block apps from running background.

6. Others

With the blog going long I will simply give you some alternatives which I have enjoyed and I have learned from other sources.

• For email use proton mail
• For cloud storage use NextCloud (but the free version is limited)
• Use open street maps instead of Google maps.

If the service is free, the best way that companies monetize is by selling your data.

In this blog, we talked a little about, how to protect online privacy. In the upcoming blogs, we will discuss further on privacy, security, and digital well-being. Thank you for reading , and share your thoughts with me.