Using Blur to Enhance Your Online Privacy
Blur is a great tool for maintaining your online privacy while performing a variety of activities. It can be downloaded at https://dnt.abine.com and installed on a variety of web browsers as well as IOS and Android compatible devices. As soon as you register for a new account, you will be able to access the application’s dashboard. There are two Blur versions: A free one (supporting masked emails, accounts and tracking protection) and a Premium version (which provides the full functionality of the tool, allowing you to use masked credit cards and phone numbers). Here is a list of all supported features:
Blur offers the “Accounts” and “Passwords” options, in essence providing a password manager functionality which can be used for quick account creation and storage. If you enter your credentials to a website you just accessed, it will offer to create an automatic entry for that website. When you access it again, it will auto-fill your credentials for easy access.
If you have access to the premium version, you can backup the database to an encrypted local copy and sync it across different devices. You can also create a variety of auto-fill items such as addresses, credit cards and and identities that can be later used in various scenarios. For example, if you are buying a hotel ticket for a personal escape, you can use your home address and personal profile to auto-fill that purchase. However, if you are going on a business trip, you might want to use your corporate address and profile details to depict that in your purchase.
One of the most interesting features that Blur has is the masked emails capability
This is very handy when you need to register for a service requiring a real email account to be provided. The only thing you need to do is setup a forwarding email address, like a Gmail account (which Blur will use to forward any emails that are received), describe the account’s use (e.g. “Jobs” if you intend to use it for applying to jobs through online Job boards or “Social Media” if you intend to use the account for registering to Facebook or Twitter).
Blur will auto-generate an email account (you can still put your own prefix and choose from a list of provided mail domains) and start forwarding any emails that are received from that account to your Gmail account. It also offers the option of allowing forwarding to be set to “OFF/ON” whenever you desire. So, in the above example, if you were looking for a job for a whole month and then you stopped, you can set the forwarding to “OFF” so you won’t receive any unnecessary messages.
Interestingly enough, I setup an account on two online job boards for the purpose of this example and have received about 187 emails in 20 days, which would have all ended up in my personal mailbox if it wasn’t for Blur.
In addition, if you use this account across multiple websites, you don’t need to go through the hustle of removing your account from each and every one. You can simply delete this in Blur and you will never receive any emails from those websites, saving you a great deal of time.
Another really great feature is the masked cards option (although you need to have a Premium account to use this):
If you visit a site and want to make an online purchase, Blur can create a masked card for you.
You can enter whatever name you like and use Blur’s physical address as the card’s billing address. The only thing you need to ensure is that the virtual card has adequate balance for the transaction. This is an amazing feature that allows a user to make online purchases without ever providing their actual card details, which might be sold or stolen if any of the third-party websites are breached.
Furthermore, if you want to ensure full anonymity for the transaction you can use a prepaid card when you purchase your Blur Premium account to ensure there’s no record of your personal details. Although this might seem highly suspicious or even overkill for a regular person to do, there are people that need this level of anonymity. Examples include victims of serious crimes that need to remain fully anonymous from a perpetrator or individuals that might be in witness protection programs or even law enforcement agents. When you want to remove a card (i.e. you think it might have been compromised or you no longer need it), you can use Blur to permanently remove it (without going through the hustle of calling your bank and having them cancel it and send you a replacement). You can even use it as a single purchase if you want, meaning that the card will no longer be available after that purchase goes through.
Another feature is “masked phones”, which is also available with the Premium version. You can get a new number used to call, text (only US and UK users can currently receive texts) and receive voicemails, which will all be forwarded to your personal phone number.
Finally, another great Blur feature is the tracking protection. When that is enabled, it will prevent any website from tracking you and provide useful statistics that will look something like the below (which shows that almost 130,000 tracking elements have been blocked within the period that Blur has been used):
A full website list is provided on the right side (omitted here for privacy) and full customisation of what is being blocked is also available.
Final Thoughts
Blur is an amazing tool which can increase your online visibility significantly. Its Premium version is about $100/year which is a really good price, considering what is being offered. In a time where online monitoring is constantly increasing, it can help you remain safe and protect your anonymity.
