In the modern era where science and technology have advanced so much, it is has become quite difficult for anyone to protect their personal data and privacy from the prying eyes. In fact, most of what we do carelessly can easily be tracked and our privacy can be breached, which isn’t something that anyone would want, their personal data in the hands of someone else.
Online privacy is a very serious issue nowadays and people are doing what they can to preserve their online privacy. Here are a few things that you can do to protect your online privacy when doing anything over the internet.
1. Limit what you share over the Internet
Most people have a habit of sharing everything of their daily routine on social media platforms and the internet to complete strangers, which isn’t something that one should do if they want to protect their online privacy. Try to minimize the things that you share with other people on social platforms. It is not necessary for anyone to know your personal information.
2. Check online privacy settings
If you have social accounts or email accounts then it would be that those accounts may contain a lot of information regarding who you are and what you do. If those accounts were to fall in the wrong hands then it could create serious problems for you, therefore try to have as tight security as possible and enable Two-Factor Authentication on all of your social and email accounts.
3. Use VPN and Private Browsing
Most of the websites that you visit track your activity and what you do over the internet and your browser may also help in providing that information to those websites. That information is mostly used by ad agencies to target you with ads of your choice, but you can’t take the risk. Try using a VPN software which encrypts your Internet connection and re-route it from a different location and also private browsing helps a lot as cookies aren’t stored and tracking is blocked. Also, when GPS is not required then turn it off as to avoid being tracked in real-time by the apps you use.
4. Optimize your Passwords
Most of the users set very easy password for their accounts which can easily be guessed and some users put the same password on all of their accounts and if someone was to find out the password of one of their account then they would lose access to all of the accounts.
It is recommended that you use a very strong password consisting of letters, numbers and special characters which are hard to crack and also try using a password manager which not only suggests you strong passwords but also keeps passwords of your different organized in a safe place.
5. Avoid using public Wi-Fi and Hotspot
When you’re out, public Wi-Fi seems like a great way to save your data consumption, but beware that accessing the internet through public connections makes the device extremely susceptible to data breaches. When using a public internet connection, avoid doing any sensitive work or typing any sensitive information such as banking or your credit card information.