Do you value your privacy? Are you worried about security risks while you are browsing the internet? Unfortunately, your worries are probably not unfounded, as the number of cyberattacks occurring each year seems to only increase – what is more, the sophistication of these attacks only gets better and better.
We spoke to one organization providing IT services London businesses use to ensure their networks are secured. The company, known as TechQuarters, had some suggestions about what the individual can do to browse the internet more securely, and getmoreprivacy. With the right tools and the right practices, one should be able to protect themselves while browsing online.
A Note on Safe Browsing Practices
It’s not all about the technology you are using when it comes to proper safe browsing. It’s largely about common sense and knowing what to look for and/or what not to do.
For example, phishing scams are extremely common. They use impersonation, falsified ads and branding, and social engineering to convince or trick people into downloading malware onto their computers.
A phishing scam could be an advert that appears on a website; it could be an email sent to your inbox, containing a malicious attachment (such as an executable file or a virus); or it could be a message on social media with a link that takes you to a malicious webpage like diebestenvpn. Millions of people fall for phishing scams every day, so knowing how to spot one is an example of knowing good safe browsing practices.
Another example of safe browsing practices is knowing whether a website you are on is secure or not. An easy way of testing this is looking at the URL – if it starts with ‘HTTP’ (where the ‘S’ stands for ‘secured’) then it will be safe. As well as this, a padlock symbol next to the site address also indicates that your browser has deemed it secured.
So, once you know how to browse safely, what other measures should you implement?
What other Reads?
Private Browsing
One of the most commonly collected forms of information on the internet is cookies. Your web browser usually collects cookies of every site that you visit, as well as your preferences on the site. In many cases, they are harmless, and even make browsing easier – but they can also be used to track you for advertising purposes.
If you don’t want your browsing patterns to be saved and used to sell you things, you can also use private browsing. Most browsers have a private mode that does not save your browsing history and doesn’t save any cookies. This is the easiest way to avoid this basic form of tracking.
Virtual Private Networks
Your IP address is an identification number for your device. They are the reason that websites can deliver the information they store to your computer – without them, it would be very hard to access any information on the internet. Unfortunately, your IP address is yet another way in which you can be tracked; it can also limit the sites you can go to if the site doesn’t allow IP addresses from your geographical location to request their information.
Using a Virtual Private Network is a reliable way to obscure your IP address, making your browsing patterns much harder to trace back to you, and also potentially unlocking geo-restricted content on the internet. The VPN you use may log your web traffic on their servers, however, so look into what information your VPN provider keeps on you. VPNs also do not stop cookies from tracking you, so use them in conjunction with private browsing, for example.
Tor Browsers
Your web traffic can be viewed and logged by your web browser, and various other entities on the internet. However, there are ways of routing your web traffic through other machines on the internet network, thus obscuring your traffic from outside eyes. The way to do this is with a Tor browser.
Tor is a highly secured form of browsing. Not only does it encrypt your IP address and traffic, but it also routes the traffic through multiple ‘nodes’ – essentially other IP addresses – making it much harder to trace the origin of the web traffic. All information passes through a node, and it is re-encrypted. Altogether, this makes it extremely hard to track browsing data.
If you want to remain hidden while browsing online, then Tor is the way to do it. However, for most people, this level of anonymity is unnecessary.
