Recently there have been some massive data breaches. Recently, the Cambridge Analytica was involved in a scandal whereby they were found culpable of scooping private data of 50 million Facebook users without seeking their consent. Even Facebook, a social media giant, could not protect the data of its users thus proving that no one is responsible for your privacy online. Cambridge Analytica’s scandal was just a tip of the iceberg. However, you can take control and improve online privacy, and here we explore how you can exactly do that.

1. Review your browser extension and permissions for mobile apps

Mobile apps always request permission to access your files, contacts, geolocation, and camera among other features. Once you allow these apps permission, you’re profiled and your data may be given out to third parties for marketing purpose. However, you can control the apps, which you give permission and review apps given permission to prevent these apps from harvesting your data. If you don’t need the browser extension, never install them.

2. Review your social media privacy settings

Social media such as Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, and Instagram among others have so much information about you, which could be visible to everyone by default. It’s, therefore, advisable that you review settings in all your social media accounts and decide which information remains visible to people.

3. Change your password strategy

Using the same password in multiple accounts you have or using a password that is easy to guess lightens the work of a hacker. It’s important that you use a password that’s not easy to guess. Each account with your valuable information should also have a unique password that may not be easy to crack.

4. Secure your web browser

Your online activities generate cookies and trackers, which portray your digital profile. These can be exploited in many ways; marketers may use such information to bombard you with annoying ads that pop up every time you’re surfing. To avoid this, you can use private browsing in antivirus such as Kaspersky Internet Security or learn how to secure your privacy in chrome.

5. Protect your privacy on Wi-Fi networks

While using public Wi-Fi, anyone can monitor your traffic as it’s not encrypted. Ensure that you avoid public Wi-Fi, and if you’ve to use it, make sure you use a secure VPN connection in order to encrypt your data.

6. Use third parties to check your status

Some online services, for example, BreachAlarm let you know whether your data is part of a stolen information. They search for your email address in database leaks and scrape databases of stolen information. Therefore, use such services to know the status of your online privacy and act appropriately if it raises a red flag, for instance, change your password.

7. Avoid sharing your personal email and phone number

By sharing your email and phone number, you’ll receive tons of spams and robot calls. Therefore, avoid sharing your personal details. If you have to, buy another SIM card and create another email that you can share where you may be required to share your details online.

8. Make sure your computer and phone are password protected

Since phones and computers are storage devices for most of your data, it’s important to secure with passwords. Doing so will keep off people from easily accessing your devices.

The above measures can help you protect your data and improve your privacy online . Although you may not secure your privacy fully, you can always improve it.

For web clients around the world, a Virtual Private Network or VPN has turned into a virtual need.

Different reasons for the developing popularity of VPNs incorporate endeavours to sidestep the censorship rules of restrictive governments, accessing online content which would some way or another be inaccessible, or basically foiling the endeavours of advertisers and application developers to utilize personal data for who knows what – or from besieging clients with undesirable messages and targeted promotions.

Thus, they’re well known. In any case, numerous clients stay unaware of how precisely it is that a Virtual Private Network keeps their data secure.

VPN is a Private Network interfacing an individual client (which could be a man or a whole association) to different points – despite the fact that that system itself might work inside nature of a bigger, open network. The Virtual viewpoint exists in how a VPN is made and kept up. Local or business systems, for example, LANs (Local Area Networks) might be secure in light of the fact that they’re physically isolated from the web. A VPN works through the web – so the techniques used to keep it “partitioned” must be digital or virtual.

To the extent the client is concerned, a VPN comprises of a point-to-point association between their own framework (PC or cell phone) and a server that is run by their VPN service provider, known as a remote access server (RAS). The RAS calls upon the main level of security for your data when it asks for and validates the certifications you have to sign onto the supplier’s system.

The VPN customer programming introduced on your laptop or PC fits each data bundle sent from your device into another parcel, before it’s conveyed over the web – a procedure known as encapsulation. The external layer of data gives some insurance to data inside and guards it from general visibility. This structures the VPN’s “private tunnel”. To expand the level of security, this embodied data is then encoded, utilizing solid encryption, with the goal that parcels can be read only by your VPN programming and the service provider’s own server. The encoded data is commonly wrapped with a header containing routing data (which additionally hides the sender’s personality), so it might travel securely across shared or public networks.

Tunneling is a procedure by which data is sent secretly on the internet, by means of a VPN. To comprehend tunneling, we need to recall that all data transmitted over the web is parted into little pieces called “packets.” Every bundle likewise conveys extra data, including the protocol, (for example, HTTP, Telnet, Bittorrentetc) it’s being utilized for and the sender’s IP address. On a VPN’s tunneled association, each data packet is put inside another encrypted data packet before it is sent over the web.

In the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks, surveillance is becoming ubiquitous in our society. “Smart” surveillance technologies and assemblages (or combinations) of such technologies are emerging, supposedly to combat crime and terrorism, but in fact are being used for a variety of purposes, many of which intrude upon the privacy of law-abiding citizens.
Surveillance systems and technologies are no longer confined to law enforcement authorities, intelligence agencies and the military – modern information technology has manifested surveillance as an everyday phenomenon.

Already today, surveillance technology monitors traffic on our roads and passengers on the Underground; government services use surveillance technology to check who is really entitled to social services; employers monitor employee keystrokes, e-mails and phone calls; and Internet service providers inspect their customers’ data traffic to target them with behavioural or personalised advertising.

The European Union has recognised the problematic potential of smart surveillance technologies and claims that a balance must be struck between surveillance and control to minimise the potential impact of terrorist action, on the one hand, and respect for human rights, privacy, social and community cohesion and the successful integration of minority communities on the other.
“If ‘collective security’ demands the surveillance of all movements and all telecommunications and collecting the fingerprints and DNA of everyone living in the EU, there can be no individual freedom, except that sanctioned by the state,” says Michael Friedewald, head of the ICT research unit at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI) and co-ordinator of the project. “EU policy should not foster the gradual move towards a surveillance society. We recommend that before public or private sector organisations adopt any new surveillance system, they should perform a technology and privacy impact assessment of the proposed system.”