Write Your Way To Security: When and Why?

Does that keep you from doing the same? Is that the reason why your service provider can trace your every move?

Every website you visit chooses what ads to share based on your search history but it doesn’t matter. Cookie policy? No time to read; ACCEPT!

I’m going to share with you a few reasons why you should keep your privacy… Private! Adding a few changes to go with it.

Transparency

It’s no secret VPNs are secure, and a must have for most people. Depending on what you use a VPN for, if the justice department was after your searches, and your VPN provider was to give up some of it “ something we’ve seen happen before” this would help get to the bottom of things. This would put you in a difficult situation. Fortunately for us this is not the type of people we’re talking about here, and doing that isn’t as easy as reading these words.

The Reason Why?

We don’t need more than one reason here, this alone is enough, trust me. It’s Your Business . That alone satisfies me, whether I’m looking for videos on YouTube or browsing the web for cute dog pics, no one has to know, not unless I’m aware and OK with it.

Privacy

Privacy goes side by side with security, if it’s private it’s secure wouldn’t you say? If your public IP is unknown, and your location is different from the original the chances of being traced are less. That doesn’t make it impossible to trace you of course but it’s harder that way. This helps us get rid of personalized ads, and may keep us from being an innocent by stander. “In the wrong place at the wrong time”, or is it the other way around?

Consider this at all times; Sometimes you aren’t the target any vulnerable machine is.

Most of us have come across pop ups that claim (especially on android devices) that our phones are infected with malicious viruses and to remove them we need to click on suspicious links.

Is this new to you?

Some malicious pop ups even claim to offer us prizes that lead to installing apps with funny names from malicious websites. The list is long, by now I hope you get the idea.

Protection

Browse the web anonymously, protect yourself from most common threats, and possible hacks. Your public IP address not showing is like having sun glasses on, your eyes say a lot about you. Hackers can get a lot of information through your IP address, through they can look for vulnerable services on your system including open ports as well as identifying your operating system. Some of these methods are similar to hacking your system through outdated apps, that can be exploited and if done successfully compromise your whole system.

Did you know?

...You can scan files you download, and receive online before using them on your computer; images, books, videos, mp3 files, and applications (be it Windows, Linux, or Mac OS). This is done online and through a free online tool. Virus total.

You can scan writing agreements, copy of your contracts, and any if not all of the writing material you send and receive online. This is a great way to change how you use the internet. Did I mention compressed files and URLs? Those work too. Virus total helps you figure out what is good and bad for your PC or mobile phone, if a file has a virus this tool will detect it.

Privacy Focused Search Engines

Seamless privacy protection on your browser for free, for any device and every device you use.

• Your searches are private, and so is your personal information
• Browse the internet freely DuckDuckgo blocks all ads
• Encrypted connection to websites

Use Secure Browsers

Try out a different browser for a change with different features that help protect your data and identity online.

Was it that obvious that I was about to mention the Tor browser? If you’ve ever used Firefox you’ll notice some similarities, in fact it is a Firefox browser with some added goodies. You can download Tor and run it on your Windows , LInux, Mac, and android device.

ProntonVPN

Do you want to try a VPN for free?

Free VPNs are scary! Most of us believe that user data is sold to marketing gurus making up for the fact that these services are free. ProntonVPN has a good reputation though, and if you’ve never tried a VPN before try this one out, it definitely won’t hurt. Now, as you’d expect the free version has some limitations but, it’s still good for a start. You could also set up your own VPN but that’s a story for another day.

We covered some effective ways to change the way we browse the internet, but of course the story doesn’t end here. Unfortunately I cannot say the same for this entry. The Tor project, ProntonVPN, Virus-total, and DuckDuckgo aren’t the only tools that get the job done but very known and trusted for great results.

This was previously published on Medium https://samwritessecurity.medium.com/write-your-way-to-security-when-and-why-4c39af0507f9