Data collection, tracking, and monitoring by either the government, your ISP, advertisers and other prying eyes have made the efforts of maintaining anonymity while using the internet a difficult task. The more we continue to embrace the ever-growing technology, the more footprints we leave online and hence more data we give away to prying eyes without knowing. Below are the reasons why you should maintain your privacy when online;
这是你的基本人权
Anyone who interferes with your privacy disregards one of your human rights. Technology has been – for a longtime – violating this right. Since you’re using a particular service, you might have no option. It’s either you risk your privacy or don’t use the service at all. But since the EU came with GDPR, actors involved in various services that involve user data are now undertaking measures to ensure that your basic right is protected.
如果你是一名活动家、调查记者，或者你的工作需要最大限度地保护隐私，那么侵犯这项权利也可能导致你的言论自由受到威胁。
避免隐私漏洞
Your digital footprint is already a vulnerability waiting to be exploited. The identifiable information you leave behind can be used to deduce your behaviors and preferences and hence profile you. What follows next is that intrusive retargeting ads will hit you and you might end up being a victim of identity theft. You can also be hit with blackmail threats. Cybercriminals can even damage your reputation by posting what they have gathered about you on the open internet. Governments can also use your private personal data for social credit ranking purposes.
如何保护您的网络隐私并保持匿名。
Achieving total anonymity in this digital era isn’t assured as you can’t entirely remove your digital fingerprint online. However, you can ensure what you are leaving behind is very minimal and cannot cause harm. Below are some precautions to help you control your privacy;
隐私意识
Similar to being cyber-aware, educating yourself regarding various aspects of privacy is the first step of ensuring you will remain anonymous. This means knowing the dos and don’ts of privacy, knowing what current events are happening and how they affect your privacy and also keeping tabs on privacy trends. Without knowledge, you won’t know what action to take when dealing with privacy issues.
保护您的网络流量
一旦掌握了相关知识，就应该采取行动，确保您的隐私得到保护。您可以使用各种方法和工具来确保您的隐私不受侵犯。首先要确保您的网络流量受到保护。它们包括
- Private browsing/Incognito mode – Private browsing helps you achieve some local privacy; this privacy covers your computer only and not what you do online. Private browsing ensures that your browser doesn’t store cookies, your browsing history and it doesn’t cache web data. This is effective when beating advertisers and other third parties who use tracking services.
- Privacy through security – By maintaining the security of your data and online traffic, you are also maintaining your online privacy. There are various ways to do this such as using strong passwords, using 2FA methods and also encrypting your devices and apps.
- Using a VPN – A Virtual Private Network encompasses both privacy and security entities. When connecting to the internet via a VPN, your data traffic is encrypted, and this ensures it’s not visible by prying eyes including the government. A VPN also gives you anonymity by assigning you a new virtual IP address. Most times, this IP address is from a pool of shared IP addresses and hence anybody tracking you will find it very hard to find
最后，请确保在同意/点击加入/继续按钮之前仔细阅读隐私政策以及服务条款和条件。
