This recent years weren’t so good for the digital forensic privacy. In fact, just like the previous one, this year had few of the highly egregious data breaches of the history. Till now, the very infamous one was the scandal of Cambridge analytica of the Facebook. In 2018, March it was found that during 2015 the firm for the Trump campaign paid for scraped data of Facebook for around 87-Million users for better influencing the voters in the upcoming elections.
However, during that, the scandal of Cambridge analytica was the biggest one. And other than these unauthorized breaches— the breaches everyone knows about— every tech based company virtually continued to get sucked up as more of the data as possible in the world during 2018, from Facebook to Google, which now can sell the browsing data to the advertisers. And this isn’t to mention the governments around the globe which throughout the year pressured the tech giants continually for weakening privacy features such as encryption.
In fact, you probably feel as you are uninteresting and insignificant and don’t have anything to hide, however every tech based company, government agency, and hacker virtually begs to vary. This is an excellent reason for relying on various digital for privacy tactics if you haven’t already. For keeping data safe, use these tools now!
VPN
Virtual private network or VPN is the digital privacy guardian, which routes every kind of the traffic on internet using a secured server that conceals where you did browse – and even your location. While using VPN, not even the ISP must be able of seeing the sites that you visit. However, each VPN software are not made equally – and although, there exists many of the free VPNs out there, probably you may want of going with one, which charges you, monthly and ensures a premium service and no incentive to sell your data. Always remember, anyone having server can easily set up the VPN service – and there exist a lot of shady small time free VPNs operated by one or more companies. Such companies may promise the high quality, nameless VPN service, however you will require of taking that on point as there exist no way which you can use if they are actually collecting the online activities or not.
Paid VPN firms are generally much more trustworthy and make their digital privacy policies and digital privacy act fines so that you can see exactly what data they have stored for you. You may want of going for VPN providers without logs, the service which doesn’t keep records of the internet activity. Among these experts are private internet access VPN, Express VPN and UR browser VPN that offers a free test/trial.
The privacy-focused browser
Till now, the amazing browser made around the digital privacy is the UR browser, which is made for an open source project. It doesn’t collect or store the browsing data, rather blocks the trackers and even upgrades automatically to HTTPS to have secure and encrypted communications. It can be used on mobiles also. There are some other options too, like Opera, Firefox, Brave, privacy-based Apple’s Safari etc. Primarily, any of such browsers are better than Chrome in terms of digital privacy as the Google’s browser – a highly popular one – which tracks a large amount of the data regarding your activities and you.
Many browsers also provide a support for ad blocking, which is another great option if the browser doesn’t provide this capability. Ghostery and Privacy badger block trackers fully and are available free of cost. On mobiles: you may need an ad blocking browser such as Firefox focus for androids and safari for iOS to support extensions such as iBlocker.
And as you search on google which can show a lot regarding you, you must ditch it using a privacy centric searching engine. Each modern desktop as well as mobile browser gets an option of setting a default search. Also, it is possible to handle the digital privacy settings on browser, beginning with switching off 3rd party cookies. The National Cyber Security Alliance provides a webpage having info regarding privacy settings for many digital privacy services and browsers while there is a guide by the University of Texas about digital privacy settings for social media to solve digital forensics privacy issues.
A secured messaging app
The Messaging apps which have end-to-end encryption can prevent third-parties, also the companies which run the service of messaging from getting your messages. A main standard in securing the messaging app is the Signal. This app is highly user friendly like many other messaging apps offered by many digital privacy groups – though it doesn’t own every whistle and bell as there are in the Facebook Messenger.
Talking about which, stop messaging through Facebook Messenger. The messages aren’t just encrypted; however, Facebook reads them for targeting you with the ads. if your friend and you don’t want of having Signal, choose some other sort of encrypted apps for messaging like WhatsApp or Apple’s iMessaage. Always remember that Facebook owns WhatsApp and its original owner have left it now due to disagreements over Facebook’s planning about the app.
A password management
Many people utilize the same weaker passwords on each site they visit to, or have 4 to 5 passwords which they alter between. Probably, they are likely of sharing few of these passwords with their friends also. Never do this. Using only some of the passwords means that whichever gets 1 credential can utilize it for logging in your account. You require to have some unique, and strong password for each site you use.
For doing that, you may need assistance from various machines. Passwords management can save and create unique passwords, very complicated passwords for filling in at websites for logging in – depending on one highly strong key or master password. Few of the amazing password managers are 1Password and Dashlane. And for the iOS 12 and macOS Mojave, Apple’s Safari and UR browser has offered a free password manager. In case, you are already using one, it will be best to use 2-factor authentication by digital privacy government, on every important site or service you visit.
