Not many internet users would have been happy to know that the FCC privacy protection has been repealed by the U.S President, Donald Trump, last month in April. The cancellation of FCC will now enable internet service providers, commonly known as ISPs, to compete with Facebook and Google in the online advertising as they can collect, share, and sell a certain type of information which is extremely beneficial to the internet users.
Had Barack Obama been the president of U.S., the internet service providers would be banned from collecting and selling sensitive user information without user’s consent. The sensitive information may include a user’s complete web browsing history, their online activity, bank account details or credit card credentials. All of this private information would only be collected if the user had given their explicit permission before companies could utilize their information for marketing purposes.
In today’s rising digital age, the use of internet has become mandatory as we cannot imagine our lives without the internet anymore. Every month, we pay a hefty amount in the form of the internet bill so we can avail the services of the internet. We certainly do not pay this amount to give our ISP a chance to store, collect, share, and then sell our private information to third parties such as marketing agencies to earn money. Despite the FCC privacy policy getting repealed, we should not stop ourselves to take technical measures in order to protect our online privacy and keep our personal information safe and secure. One of the best measures in protecting our online privacy is using a VPN service.
You can keep yourself safe on the internet by selecting your ISP carefully. Pick an ISP that respects your privacy and would not share or sell your private information to any third party without your consent. You can also use HTTPS Everywhere and Tor browser to maintain your online privacy but we would still recommend using a VPN service. Let’s find out how you can protect your online privacy with a VPN service.
Using a VPN Service
Instead of using other ways to keep your private information safe online, we would strongly recommend you give it a shot to using a VPN service. With cyberattacks growing rapidly all across the globe, it is important that we soon realize which tools can help us keep our data safe. Since privacy rules have been repealed, the significance of using a VPN to protect your online privacy has increased tenfold. A VPN acts like a secure, encrypted tunnel between your electronic device and internet connection and completely encrypts your internet traffic, making impossible for other parties, including your own ISP, to intercept or track the encrypted data. When your device is connected to the VPN server, you are only allowing your data to be seen by the VPN provider. Therefore, you need to be extremely careful while choosing a VPN provider because you do not want them to do shady things with your private information because that’s the reason you opted for it – to keep your online data protected from the online hackers, government, and other surveillance. A VPN helps you in staying anonymous on the web while hiding your IP address and does not monitor or keeps a log of your web activity. Yes, a VPN does not keep any record of our web browsing history and promises not to track our online activity.
Factors to be Considered Before Using a VPN
Before you decide to opt for a VPN service to maintain and protect your online privacy, we would like to state some factors that you should definitely consider prior to using a VPN.
- You need to know if you are opting for a free or paid VPN option. You’re going to get a lot of VPN options on the internet but you need to be careful while picking one. We would recommend you pick one and test it out during its trial period. If you think that particular VPN suits your needs, then go for its premium version.
- You should always select the VPN service that has been around in the market for a long time and has garnered good reviews. If a VPN is relatively new in the market, it will become difficult for you to trust the VPN provider.
- Always double check if your VPN service keeps a log of your data or not. If it does, you need to make sure what kind of information is logged. However, we would only suggest you go for the VPN service that strictly believes in a no log policy and does not keep logs of your information without your consent.
- Last but not the least, check if your VPN service uses encryption while providing the service. We would recommend using a service that supports multiple levels of protection – multiple protocols such as OpenVPN or IPSec. Utilizing these security protocols ensures outstanding online privacy and security available.
Honestly, it is a shame that our elected representatives have given priority to corporate interests over our privacy rights. Had it been not that way, we would never have to take technical measures and go through a whole lot more to protect our online privacy.
