Although tech corporation already implement protection to secure your data, it is also important for you to protect your own privacy. There are a few tools that you can use to protect your personal information online such as VPN, encryption, privacy browser. Let us see the things that you can use to protect your personal information.
Why You Should Protect Your Personal Information?
Individual identity is very valuable things so it is important for you to be able to prove your identity which can be done by providing your personal information. Usually it is a process that need to be done when you do anything related to important aspect of your life such as making a passport, applying a loan, and many other.
If your data is stolen then other people can use it to fake their identity as you. They can also use it to damage your reputation, getting access to your bank account, taking loan under your name which can destroy your credit scone.
This is why, it is important for you to protect your personal information so no one can take your identity. Especially since your personal information is the gateway that can be used to access other personal information and financial account.
To protect your personal information, you can try to use tools such as VPN, encryption, privacy browser. These tools can help you to safeguard your data which can be hard to do manually online.
Using Privacy Browser to Secure Your Online Experience
If you want to protect your personal information the first basic thing that you need to do is to use privacy browser. it is actually a feature that already provided by most web browser which allows you to browser the internet freely without having any record stored.
When you use the browser using this feature, they would not keep any of your information such as browse history, login information, search history, cookies and so on. They will delete any of the information once you close the browser. That way, your information will be a little bit more secure.
You can access this feature by turning on incognito on Chrome, private window on Firefox, Safari, Opera, Edge and most of the other browsers. However, even though this feature is meant to secure your privacy but some people might find it a bit annoying. Especially since everything will be gone once the browser is closed so you need to put your login information every time and you cannot find the website that you have visit before.
But do not worry as there is another option that will secure your privacy better than this feature which is by using VPN. The VPN is equipped with encryption technology that will help to better secure your online experience
Read More What Is GDPR: A Comprehensive Guide To Data Protection
How to Use VPN to Protect Your Personal Information Using Encryption?
VPN can help to encrypt the traffic you use to access internet which then help to mask your online identity. That way, it will be harder for other to track and take your data. Without VPN, when you access the internet then the connection will come from your ISP which will track you through your IP address.
Then the web traffic that you access will go through the ISP servers before they finally reach your device. This means that your ISP can see and track everything that you access on the internet.
You might think that your ISP is trustworthy. However, they can actually sell the browsing history that they get from their users to advertisers, government, police and any other third parties. Furthermore, the ISP itself can be hacked and if that happen then the hackers can take your personal data.
It would be even more dangerous if you often use public networks as this type of network use less security. This means that the network can be used to hack your device and steal your personal information.
This is why you need to use a VPN which can redirect your traffic through a remove server owned by the VPN provider that already specially configured to protect your data. Thus, any third parties or ever your ISP cannot see the websites that you visit.
They also unable to see any information that you put on the internet. The VPN will encrypt the data that you send into and received from the internet into unidentified gibber. Thus, even if anyone can get the data, it cannot be read and useless.
Best Features That Your VPN Should Have.
VPN can be used to do various things, but the main thing is it should be secure and safe. To make sure that the VPN is secured against compromises there are a few features that your VPN should have such as:
- IP Address encrypting
The most important feature that VPN should be able to do is to hide IP address from third parties and even your ISP. With this feature you will be able to receiving and sending data online without seen by anyone except yourself and your VPN provider. - Logs encrypting
Your VPN should be able to encrypt your trace online such as cookies, search history, internet history and many other. Cookies encryption is very important as it help to stop anyone from seeing your personal information such as finance information, personal data and many other that you input into the website as you do not want it to be used to trace you back. - Kill switch
When the VPN connection drop all of a sudden then the secure connection that you use will be down too. So, your VPN should have a kill switch feature that will shut down program that you have selected during the VPN sudden downtime so it will reduce the change of your data being compromise. - Multifactor authentication
Your VPN should have a feature that can be used to verify anyone who tries to log in using different types of authentication method. For example, when you first log in then you will be asked to use your username and password. Then they will send a unique code to the registered email or mobile for the next authentication before finally allowing the access. With this feature your connection will be harder to access by third parties that tries to hack your connection.
Tips to Protect Your Personal Information on The Internet
Using tools is a good way to protect your personal information. However, you also need to use the internet in secure manner to protect your personal information. You yourself is the one that is responsible in protecting your personal information. That is why you need to do these things when accessing the internet:
- Limit data access
You cannot complain if big technology company such as Facebook and Google collect your data if you allow them to do. That is why you need to limit their data access by restricting their ability in tracking your location and activities.
You can do this by changing the data collecting setting in each of the service that you use. Most service will have data collecting option under their setting which you can turn off so they are not allowed to collect your data. - Use alternative search engine
When you want to find something on the internet, you do not need to only use Google which may track your search history. Instead you can use alternative search engine such as DuckDuckGo, SearchEncrypt, StartPage and many other. These search engines will allow anonymous search so your privacy will be protected. - Use plugins
There are a few plugins that you can install in your browser to increase your security such as Privacy Badger and Avira BrowserSecurity. These plugins will show counters that can help you to see how you are tracked online. These plungins will also detect and remove malvertising attacks on your browser. - Using security application
You need to install security application to protect your device from attacks. These applications can detect malware then prevent damage from happening. Make sure that the security application you install in your device and protect you from zero-day attacks as well as known vulnerabilities. - Update your software
It is important for you to update your software especially operating system, antivirus software, browsers and many other software that you use to protect your privacy. These updates will eliminate vulnerabilities that they find on the older software version that can be used to hack your device. Most software already has automatic update feature so make sure you turn that on. - Use password manager
It is important for you to use secure passwords which usually consist of long gibberish letters. However, it would be hard for you to remember those letters precisely. Especially since you should not use the same passwords twice. But do not worry as password manage can help to manage the password and even secure it for you.
Conclusion
There are many ways that you can do to protect your personal information. But everything should come from yourself by having secure manner when using the internet. Other tools such as VPN, encryption, and privacy browser will also help you to secure your online experience.
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