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| Image by SplitShire from Pixabay |
Being anonymous has its own benefits. Certain freedoms come with being untraceable and unrecognizable but it also requires sacrifice because the modern web designed to built around profiling, tracking, and analyzing user behavior. So it’s impossible to stay completely anonymous because there will always be something that potentially could be discovered to identify you. If you want to keep yourself safer in this digital age, there are several steps you can take to stay hidden on the web or which serve to closer hiding, disguising your identity and reduce the amount of spam and ads, etc.
STEPS YOU CAN TAKE AND TOOLS YOU'LL NEED TO STAY ANONYMOUS AND HIDDEN ONLINE:-
- Tor browser:- The Onion Router (TOR) browser. TOR was created by the U.S navy to enable peoples to browse the internet anonymously. TOR network cover up your identity by moving your traffic across different TOR servers and encrypt your network traffic. So the person on the other end sees random nodes of the TOR connection and can't trace the traffic back to you. But the drawback of TOR is routing through many nodes implies that the network connection speed is slower than the normal internet. Some specially designed sites only accessed by TOR that are using ".onion" top-level domains rather than commonly used domains like .com, .org, .in, etc
- VPNs:- VPN (Virtual Private Network) encrypts all of a device’s internet traffic and routes it through an intermediary server in the location of the user’s choosing. VPN gives you the advantage of not only securing traffic between your computer and servers but also masking your IP address and location. A VPN is similar to a TOR bridge but you have to choose the best VPN service if you want airtight security. Don't trust on free VPN services, I recommend only signing up for VPN providers that don’t monitor connections and log your activity. And also you can even improve TOR by using it in combination with a compatible VPN.
- Search engines:- Google, Bing, and Yahoo are the most popular search engines, but they also collect the most data about you in order to serve relevant ads and personalize services. Especially when you logged in with your account. So you can use private search engines. Private search engines are alternatives to these popular search engines and do not track or store information about you. Each search engine has its own benefits and set of tools to make searching more secure. They’re also good for stopping advertisers and others from tracking your search history.
- Temporary emails:- Never use your own email or log into the email account when trying to be anonymous. Email addresses are a very big part of online identity because many apps and websites require users to sign up, you’ll need an email address. On the internet, Several services offer free fake and temporary email accounts. These types of email accounts exist for only a short period of time or just long enough to complete a registration process.
- Virtual machine:- A Virtual machine is basically a second computer within your computer. It works as a hypervisor, creating a virtual machine in which a user can run multiple operating systems in a single machine and to freely switch between OS instances running simultaneously. The best use of a virtual machine is when you want to open a file and want to make sure no one is watching you or tracking you. Whatever you do inside the Virtual machine will not impact your host system. After your use, you can simply delete the virtual machine.
- Social Security:- Share less information on social media because anyone can easily access our private data via social media. Information like your birthdate and your city make it easier for cybercriminals to hack your accounts or steal your identity. So sharing your information publicly in less amount is better.
- Check app permissions:- Whenever your Mobile apps ask you for permissions you need to carefully read all the permission requests because some apps request more permissions than they actually need and are frequently caught extracting personal details from users' phones and share those details back to the app maker. Does that app really need to access your microphone, location, contacts, don't give unneeded permissions to any random apps.
- Digital assistants:- Virtual or digital assistants observe and collect data in real-time. These digital assistants collect data and use that include personal, sensitive, and potentially identifiable information. These always-on digital snoops are toxic to privacy and anonymity. So don't use virtual assistants because there is no way to make them less privacy-invasive.
- Cookies and your browsing history:- Cookies and browsing history used by the website to track you and identify where you’ve been. So regularly clear cookies and browser history of your browser.
- Location:- When you surf the internet web sites try to get location data from your mobile or PC, and use that to determine your location, target ads at you, and help identify you. So always Turn off your location settings.
CONCLUSION:- This article is all about online anonymity if you have any queries feel free to ask in the comment section.