Protect Your Privacy

The Global Privacy Control initiative - which includes a number of applications, browsers and search engines - offers an option that enables users to put a "setting" on their browsers to tell each site they visit that they do not want to sell or share personal data with any party or person. And websites should respect this desire, according to a report by the American Vox website.

The setting aims to prevent websites from creating a digital profile of users, and is in support of the privacy movement and building a browsing environment that does not rely on collecting user data for profit, and the new tool is still in its beta phase.

Although some browsers have built-in tools (or extensions available) that aim to stop tracking, they are not always effective, and with laws such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) giving users the right to require companies not to sell their data, these users should Submit this request for every website they visit, which is a very time consuming process for most people.

With the Global Privacy Monitor, this request will be automatic, made as soon as you visit the site, and if you are in a legally required area - such as California - the websites will have to comply with your request.

This feature may not offer much at the moment, but nonetheless it benefits some users, and it is now available on the DuckDuckGo mobile browser, and is in the process of being added to the Brave browser.

It can also be obtained through the "Privacy Badger" extension available in most browsers.

But as Wired points out, it may be several years before the global privacy monitoring tool becomes fully operational.

Some companies make financial gains by knowing the type of applications installed on smart phones and the duration of use of these applications, as well as the presence of a lot of curious applications on smart phones, which collect a large amount of information about the user and his behavior on the Internet, so the user must check the applications that he installs and uses on his mobile devices.

Web browsing data is very important information that should be well protected, and therefore the user should avoid browsers installed by companies producing smartphones or tablets, and it is better to rely on a reliable browsing program, similar to what happened with the Chinese company Xiaomi producing for smart phones.

Researcher Gabriel Searlig, a specialist in IT security, discovered that web browsers previously installed on Xiaomi phones, such as the Mint and Mi browser, link all the websites that are called. And search queries with identification number (ID), and transfer this data to Xiaomi, even when running private windows or incognito mode, without being logged in by the user account with Xiaomi.

The Chinese company defended itself, saying that this data is anonymous, but it launched a new update for browsers that allows the user in the settings to turn off the data transfer function in at least incognito mode.

browsers

It is better to rely on trusted browsers instead of previously installed browsers (communication sites)

data traffic monitoring

And if the user wants to monitor the traffic of specific applications or the entire device on Android phones, he can use anti-tracking applications such as “Blokada”, or firewall applications such as “Netguard”, and these applications need some training, and then Provides the ability to disconnect the smartphone from certain servers.

To get such apps with the full set of functionality, the user should install them from the trusted F-Droid app store, which is limited to free and open source Android apps. The Store itself is available as an app that must be installed first.

Apple iPhone owners can try the “Lockdown” tracking application, and basically the user has to check the permissions granted to applications, including applications that are available from companies that produce smartphones.