Your online privacy may be invaded even when you are not aware of that. There are a number of ways commercial giants keep their eyes on us.
We all do a complete circle daily: wake up, rush to office, return home late in the evening to grab a snack, and spend a few hours staring into the ‘Black Mirror’. Some people prefer TV, but the rest dives deeply into the web. Who would refuse surfing favorite websites before hitting the pillow? Bet, you do it too, without thinking much about your online privacy.
Users are sure their lock is a warranty of safety and security, although they are completely wrong. Big brother is watching us even if we believe we are absolutely alone in that room.
There are several ways corporations keep their eyes on us and invade our online privacy. And when users learn how to protect themselves, these companies launch new chases for our data.
It is high time to fix it all. Let us check how commercial giants invade our online privacy and what we can do to make them stay away, no matter what they do in order to get more info about you.
1. Access to Messages
Back in 2013, Edward Snowden revealed one of those ways we leak all our personal data to that invisible third party, which is there in each conversation.
If you are protected and your messages are encrypted, what you write gets visible to you and your friend only. Even if anyone breaks into this convo, they see nothing but a bunch of meaningless weird symbols. To transform them into real words, one should possess a public key that decrypts it. The key is granted to every user automatically.
2. Access to Camera
You have probably seen people with colorful bright stickers or special gadgets covering their cameras. Somehow these users cause a lot of laughter or are considered to be out of their minds.
As it is well known, that if there is no light, the camera is offline. However, that diode is not the trigger. As it turns out, it lights up only if we turn on a video calling app or the one that helps us with taking cam shots.
But wily hackers know how to reach our webcams without letting us notice it. They use it for learning more about our daily habits. Although there are more dangerous cases: there exist websites where people addicted to peeping pay cash for watching some other people living their lives.
Even if you start your computer only at your office where you stare into the monitor with a mug of coffee in your hand – chances are there is a guy on another end of the world who stares at you at least a few hours a day.
In most cases, any private internet access review doesn’t provide users with enough information on hidden dangers. This is why every second of us actually leaves the back door open.
A VPN can give you protection from these dirty-minded people. It simply hides your activity from the others and nobody is capable of detecting whenever you are online or offline.
3. Access to Browser History
If you belong to those people who never erase their browser history, you are in danger. That’s like leaving your fingerprints on the crime scene.
This is exactly how corporations check out our basic interests to provide us with the right ads and content. And this is exactly how they make us shop and spend more money (although we planned no purchase).
VPN helps us remain the only one who decides what to see or buy. These applications do not work to erase our history, they simply prevent it from storing. Even our Internet providers have no chance of tracing any of our steps online. Thus, it is one of the ways to protect our online privacy and freedom of moves within the network.
4. Access to Data Storage
If these guys are capable of breaking into your chats, emails and even turn on your camera, it won’t take them long to reach your private data. All that we store there at our SSDs is a piece of cake for sharks of hacking.
To protect yourself, you can use programs that work for changing our IP addresses and locations. These create a kind of tunnel that hides computers from everyone else in the network. Make everyone think you are schoolkid from Zambia while sitting somewhere in Scotland or vice versa.
Online privacy in today’s world
Nowadays we are never sure if we can trust people around us. It is all the same with people we don’t know. Letting strangers interfering in our lives is something too risky. This is why millions of users stick to installing VPN applications, antivirus, and other types of protection software that guarantees their online privacy and safety.
In today’s world, which heavily relies on the Internet, it is particularly important to protect yourself not only from spies but from other super dangerous criminals within the network – identity thieves.
There is an option on Windows ten called “go incognito”. I’m not convinced it really works. Your advice to be aware and cautious is good. Currently I am using a program called “Webroot Secure Anywhere. This is part of my computer service. It works very well and does an automatic scan a few times a day. So far I have had not hacking problems but one. This is an annoying pop up posing as Microsoft. It pops up and makes an annoying electronic noise. My service told me to hold in the on/off button for 30 seconds. This works for me.
Could you suggest a VPN app please? Thanks you in advance for your help.