Some believe that the internet is a place built on the anonymous structure to maintain privacy or stay anonymous online leading the way to free speech. For years, people are trying to figure out who is actually sneaking into your privacy online taking note on where we have been and what exactly we do online. These sneaking entities also keep a close watch on how long we are online and how long or how frequent we visit any website. This being said, staying anonymous online by protecting your privacy is hardly given any importance.
If you think the snooping entities are just the law enforcement agencies or other governmental bodies, then you are highly mistaken. The big companies or the tech giants such as Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft have gathered a lot of your information via cookies and other ways for fulfilling their targeted advertisements. Additionally, you actually compromise your data online via the data breaches and hacks.
There is absolutely nothing wrong in avoiding being tracked online and there are legit reasons to be so. Not everyone hiding their identity online possesses wrong intentions. For example, if someone is a whistle-blower and wants to unveil a corruption, his actions might be life-threatening and he needs complete online anonymity. There is nothing wrong in it however.
If you want to stay anonymous online completely for your entire life, then here are all the tips and tricks that you have to follow every time you spend time going online and visiting various websites including the dark web links.
How To Remain Completely Anonymous On The Internet?
In this segment, we are going to discuss all the pointers that you need to abide by in order to protect your identity online. We have listed out all the possible tips and tricks so that you do not miss out on anything.
Invest In A Promising Virtual Private Network (VPN)
A VPN, also termed as the Virtual Private Network is one of the most efficient ways for protecting your online privacy by helping you stay anonymous online. What a VPN does is it hides your IP address or your unique online identifier and simultaneously passes all your online data through a secure and encrypted tunnel virtually that can prevent the websites to track your online activity. It also prevents the website trackers to detect from which country you are browsing. There are a lot of VPNs available on the market from where you can choose your perfect fit. You can even consult the VPN List to compare between various VPNs before you choose one. It is ideal if you do not go for free VPNs as you would not get the desired result. It is always better to pay a small subscription fee and get better results.
Use TOR Browser For Browsing The Dark Web Links
The Tor, derived from The Onion Router, is a special software that was originally developed for the U.S. Navy to protect governmental communications. Later, the browser has been widely used and misused for various hidden activities or illegal activities. The browser is free to download and use where the individual can establish private communications with each other. It makes it impossible for the websites to track your online activity and as well as your location. Tor is relatively slower than the other regular browsers, however, it has come a long way to where it currently stands.
Use Signal Messaging App To Protect Your Conversations
The Signal messaging app is one of the most secure messaging apps that is encrypted end to end and is known to be the best in the messaging app lists. It lets you send the text messages and as well as voice memos including voice calls and audio calls. It works just as any other messaging app but maintains encryption. It is so created that the National Security Agency can also not brute-force. However, there are technical limitations of this app where mass surveillance is placed to access all the Signal traffic. Thus, you must not strongly rely on the app if your discussions need absolute anonymity.
Use Secure Webmail and Encrypted Email Providers
If you use a webmail or email app like Yahoo mail or Gmail, then you must know they are not secure at all. There are often incidents of email breaches. If you want to have a secure email that is end-to-end encrypted, then the best options are ProtonMail and SecMail. If you are not willing to have a new email account in the aforesaid email providing services, then you can consider installing Mailvelope. It is a browser extension working on both Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox that brings OpenPGP encryption to your webmail service. Another similar extension is SecureGmail that encrypts and decrypts the emails that are sent through Gmail. In case of the last one, the recipients need to install the extension as well for decrypting the encrypted email.
Go Incognito
One of the basic steps that you can take is to use the incognito mode on your browser every time you open it for going online. You can find it in their respective settings menus. The private browser does not store cookies or browsing history on your computer. It is not highly secure as the other secure modes described earlier and your IP address can still be tracked.
Use Temporary Email
Temporary emails are disposable emails where a created email can be used for the time being and are generally anonymous in nature. You can dispose of the email as soon as your work is done. This is mostly used to be anonymous online and as well as use an email that can be disposed of after using it at the moment. Additionally, it is used to avoid spam when filling in the forms on the website that would need an email address to proceed further. There are a lot of temporary emails of which two most prominent are Guerrilla Mail and Mailinator. However, these emails are not extensively secure thus it can only be used for the time being to avoid giving away your own information where it is required.
Be Cautious On What You Post Online
The previous generation was hesitant towards going online and even if they did, they were hesitant towards sharing anything in the online world. On the contrary, the generation that now reigns has born and brought up inline with digitization and technology. This new generation feels it is “okay” to overshare things online and in social media. What you did, where you went, which events are important to you on posting online does not pose a major threat unless it is backed by some other shared personal information that together can cause a threat. Being anonymous online does not mean you can share anything and everything without any risk.
Check The App Permissions That You Randomly Accept
In this busy world no one has got time to scrutinize what any app permissions are asking for and where they use it. Thus, we tend to accept the app permissions randomly without even going through it once. Even if we do, once in a blue moon, we do not generally question if those app permissions are relevant to the app. For example, an app asks for your friend list. In that case we need to counter question if it really needs to access the friend list or what it would do knowing who all are there in the list. Same goes for location or microphone permissions as well. The apps have a tendency to collect more information that they actually require. These data are collected and misused often and you may find your data openly sold on the dark web. Reason? You did not scrutinize the need for those permissions and you were over-sure that whatever permissions you grant to a site or an app will not be misused owing to the online anonymity. It is highly recommended that you recheck all the permissions granted to the websites and apps and turn off if you think a particular permission is unnecessary.
An Ad-Blocker Is Your Best Friend
Are you frustrated with the advertisements displayed here and there when you go online? Well, it is quite annoying but the companies keep on doing this to you in order to reach their targets. It traces all your online activities and spam you with the ads frequently. The best way to avoid this is installing an Ad-blocker. It will block the ads as you will not be tracked online that much. A better browser is the “Brave Browser” that has an in-built adblocker and is way better than the other browsers currently.
These are all the key tips and tricks that you should follow if you want to stay anonymous online completely all throughout your life. However, there are few more tips and we expect to add more to the list as time goes.
Disclaimer: Read the complete disclaimer here.
maybbe its can be fine future way