Privacy is a forgotten concept in a world now dominated by social media. With so much of our daily lives spent online, it’s a frightening notion to think of just how much our personal lives can be tracked, analyzed, and turned into quantifiable data that can be used against us in a myriad of ways. If the average person could see how much highly personal information about themselves can be discerned by their web activities, they would likely become more obsessed with online privacy.
Fortunately, as much as most of us willingly give away our rights to privacy every time we sign up for a new app, game, or online service, or click “accept all cookies”, there are plenty of ways to safeguard ourselves online too. As we begin the new year a little bit wiser, here’s a look at some great ways to protect yourself and keep your online activities private in 2024.
Why Online Privacy is so Important
By now, most people know that the internet can be a sordid place, filled with dark corners that scammers, hackers, and all manner of illicit people inhabit. Even when we aren’t opening ourselves up to direct threats like those posed by hackers and identity thieves, the sheer wealth of misinformation out there and the devious industries that enable it to fester make the internet a place where all sorts of negative consequences can abound for those who aren’t careful. Our internet activities, whatever form they may take, leave behind a traceable digital fingerprint, and in case you’re wondering, using incognito mode doesn’t change that fact.
Despite this, there are several options for entertainment and online activities that offer users the ability to maintain a degree of privacy and anonymity online. For example, the best anonymous casinos online let users play their favorite gambling games without the need to provide any personal information or verification documents ordinarily required by Know Your Customer (KYC) policies. And, there’s always the possibility of accessing regular websites via anonymous browsers like Tor.
Services like these do allow for private internet use to an extent. However, it’s important to note that your web activity and digital fingerprints in such instances are still traceable, so while anonymity may be possible, true privacy on the net is very difficult without some specialized tech knowledge or digital services that help enable it.
For true privacy nuts, there are still many things that can be done to heighten privacy while using the net. While it’s virtually impossible to gain full anonymity and privacy on the net without taking over 20 specialized steps, here are some things that can certainly provide you with a far more private browsing experience.
Use a VPN
Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are encrypted networks that help keep your connection secure and private. While they don’t provide complete privacy and anonymity, they can keep your browsing traffic private from hackers or anyone who may be attempting to snoop. VPNs work by establishing a secure server operated remotely by the service provider.
The effect of this is that they encrypt all data that passes through the connection. While they can’t completely hide your IP address, they are effective in masking them. To get the best out of a VPN service, unfortunately, they do come at a cost. However, there are several great VPN providers out there and all that choice has made them a lot more affordable.
Change Your Browser
Most of us utilize the most famous and trusted browsers around like Google Chrome. However, for all the convenience and value-added services they come with, the tech giants that run such browsers have a vested interest in tracking all their users’ online activities. If you’ve ever wondered why after you search for a certain product online, you’re bombarded with advertisements afterward that relate to such products, that’s because those companies utilize your internet activity for targeted advertising based on the data collected.
To get around this and enjoy better anonymity while browsing, other browsers like a Tor browser are great for hiding your connection history. Tor browsers utilize a worldwide connection of computers whose users voluntarily make their devices available to hide the identity of your connection when you browse. Another benefit is that a Tor browser is free.
Again, such a step isn’t infallible and while it’s much harder to track or trace a Tor connection, it isn’t impossible either. It should also be noted that such services also come with the downside of having far slower connections than the likes of Google Chrome. The use of a more secure service provider can also be applied to other digital activities, so here are a few others that can also benefit from it.
Other Secure Connections
We tend to only think of digital privacy in relation to our internet use. However, since our lives in the modern world have created a dependency on smartphones and instant messaging, every app or digital platform we use daily can be substituted for a more secure one.
This can be applied to using secure messaging systems rather than ordinary text. Such systems have end-to-end encryption which means even the providers can’t see your messages. The same is true of using a secure email service and digital storage services.
It’s also a great idea to be conscious of how much personal information we put onto the web. Posts on social media or blogs can be a great way to stay social in the digital age, but users should always be careful of how much personal information is contained in such posts. For example, posting a picture of yourself with your car can look cool but if the vehicle’s registration plates are visible, that information, together with your name and other information on your social media, can easily be used to commit identity theft.
Check for HTTPS When Browsing
Searching for stuff online has been such a commonplace activity in the modern world that most of us do it mechanically. That usually means typing in a search and mindlessly clicking on whichever results come up first or look the most promising at first glance in relation to what we’re looking for.
Unfortunately, the downside of this is that not many search engine users bother to check the credentials of the pages they click. A good habit to counter the risks this entails is to only use web pages whose URLs contain the letters HTTPS in them. Most users know that HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol. However, those sites with an ‘S’ indicate that they also use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to encrypt the web traffic between your device and the sites you interact with.
Good Password Habits
This one can’t be overstated as it’s probably the easiest way for an unauthorized person to gain access to your digital devices, apps, and files. Having good password habits not only restricts access to those things from everyone around you but can also make it harder for more sophisticated threats like hacking to be used against you.
Some basic good habits for passwords entail using one that is at least 12 characters long and contains a mixture of upper and lower case letters, numbers, and special characters to make them harder to guess. They should also not be something that can easily be linked to you like a child’s name or a birthday. Passwords should be augmented with other access control measures such as fingerprint scanners or facial recognition wherever possible.
For those who want to use more advanced options, password managers can help you securely keep track of and store your passwords remotely. Lastly, using features like two-factor authentication (2FA) can be very useful as they add an extra step to the process of accessing the device or app in question.
Privacy vs Anonymity
While the words privacy and anonymity are usually used interchangeably, they don’t actually mean the same thing. It’s important to understand the distinction between them to avoid mistakenly believing you’ve managed to achieve some kind of all-encompassing invisibility on the internet. The best way to understand them is to think of one as going outside with a disguise on while the other is staying inside to avoid being seen at all.
Privacy is the latter since we can, to an extent, control how much private information we make visible to the online world and the companies and apps we interact with digitally. Wherever possible, privacy on the internet can entail doing things like choosing a username rather than our real ones, not providing personal contact details if we have the option, or using an avatar rather than a picture of ourselves.
On the other hand, anonymity means information can be shared, but our identities cannot be linked to that data. The concept of anonymity is therefore an appealing one to anyone who values privacy. Fortunately, there are online services that now offer it and most of them exist because of one groundbreaking innovation of the 21st century that inherently provides it — blockchain technology.
Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain Technology
Ever since Bitcoin took the world by storm, there’s been a massive digital gold rush that’s led to thousands of different cryptocurrencies being created in its wake. The concept of cryptocurrency is so appealing because it runs on blockchain technology. The reason why it’s so appealing from a privacy and anonymity aspect is because a blockchain is essentially a digital ledger that allows transactions and information on it to be recorded securely.
An added benefit is that those records basically can’t be tampered with. This is a groundbreaking proposition since it allows for virtually immutable authentication of those transactions and records. From a financial point of view, cryptocurrency transactions are far more secure and untraceable than ordinary digital banking or ETFs. Their success has led to far more widespread use, with more and more online retailers and service providers adopting them as an alternative payment method.
Real World Applications
Making online payments and the allure of online shopping have made our lives vastly more convenient. However, that convenience comes with inherent risks like identity theft and other forms of digital fraud. Cryptocurrency provides an ideal solution to both these problems since it’s both secure and anonymous.
Given these two perks, it’s no surprise that two industries that now offer a massive selection of options for cryptocurrency payments are the gaming and online gambling arenas. The iGaming industry has experienced staggering growth in the last two decades. You can now play every conceivable card, table, and slot game, or bet on all manner of sports events from the comfort of your own home. That convenience has been augmented by the fact that most reputable online casinos and betting apps now accept payment in cryptocurrency and offer the chance to play them anonymously.
The gaming industry in general is also poised to shift gears drastically as crypto gaming gains traction. It works on a play-to-earn basis and rewards players with cryptocurrency to play games that are growing ever more mainstream as the concept catches on. Innovations like these and the growing number of outlets and digital services that now accept cryptocurrency mean there are more and more online activities that can be enjoyed while maintaining privacy and anonymity at the same time.
