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How to Remove Your Digital Ex

Divorce or breakup can be heartbreaking. And the heartbreak can prove all the more intense if we’re unable to avoid contact with our exes- or reminders of life with them. So if you’ve suffered a breakup, then, how can you remove your ex from your digital life?

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Block or Unfollow Your Ex

This would seem to be elementary. Most of us, though, find it difficult to suppress curiosity about our exes. Still, we have to discipline ourselves to avoid searching their profiles. If we do search them, we train the Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram algorithms to show us more about them, and this is also true of inquiries on browser search engines such as Google, Safari, or Firefox.

You may also have to mute friends or family members (temporarily, of course) who often share photos of your ex. This tells the algorithms you want to avoid these people, and your feed will feature different posts.

Remove Memories from Your Tablets, Phones, and Social Media

If you own one of the newer iPhones, this will be easy. In iOS 14, you’ll find a tool labelled Suggest Fewer Memories Like This. To activate it, open the Photos tab. Tap the For You icon, and you’ll find a list labelled Memory. Choose one you want to eliminate. You’ll find three dots next to your choice. Hit these, and you’ll be shown two options: Delete Memory and Suggest Fewer Memories Like This.

In Facebook, you’ll find the Hide People option on the left side of the Memories page.

Google Photos offers the options of hiding people, pets, or even particular dates- so you can avoid painful reminders of anniversaries. Find the Photos app, scroll to Photo Settings, and open the Memories tab. When you find it, hit the Hide People or Pets or Hide Date icons.

Monitor Your Smart Home Devices

If you neglect this step, you’re begging for trouble. Out of concern for privacy, we recommend NOT acquiring an Alexa or Siri device in the first place. If you do have one, though, and you can’t bear to part with it, at least exercise caution with it. An ex could activate the device remotely- even when you’re away from your home.

Kim Komando, a web expert who bills herself “Your Digital Goddess”, says she’s heard more stories than she can count about exes connecting to WiFi systems of old mates and bugging their routers. Even worse, it’s legal in most jurisdictions to hack WiFi.

Remove or Audit Old Accounts

Some web services, such as iCloud and Google Drive, allow access by exes to sensitive data, including text and photos, so you may have to contact the provider to remove your ex’s access. Exercise special vigilance in monitoring shared paid services, and ejecting your ex if necessary.

Change Your Passwords and Security Questions

Kim Komando suggests changing your passwords to any old accounts if there’s even a chance your ex still has them. And don’t forget the security questions. Even in a casual relationship, partners are likely remember important events in each other’s histories.

For paid services, such as Netflix, you may need additional steps after changing passwords. Check the box marked Require All Devices to Sign in Again with New Password. You’ll have to log in again, but your privacy- and avoiding additional expense- is worth the inconvenience.

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If you want to remove your ex from your online activity, these suggestions will help. Remember: eternal vigilance is the price of privacy.

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States May Ban Online Censorship

Until now, the Masters of the Universe have seemed invulnerable. Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Amazon have grown accustomed to getting their way without effective opposition. Competitors can’t challenge their market domination, and the Biden-Harris junta evidently doesn’t want to rein them in. Unless the states intervene, Big Tech owns us.

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Some states, though, have decided to enter the fray. Many have accused major tech platforms of online censorship. Florida and Montana led the way, considering laws forbidding censorship in social media, browser search engines, and online shopping fora.

Add Texas to the list. Texas Senator Bryan Hughes (R-Mineola) sponsored a bill that could penalize Amazon, Facebook, Google, or Amazon for blocking access to information or commentary.

The bill would authorize Texans banned or suspended by Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube to sue them.

Hughes said, “We don’t allow a cable company to cut off your television because it doesn’t like your religion.”

What do the states say this is about?

Governor Greg Abbott backed the Hughes bill. “Big Tech’s effort to censor conservative viewpoints is un-American”, Abbott said, “and we’re not going to allow it in the Lone Star State.” Abbott accused several firms of leading “a dangerous movement to censor conservative voices and religious freedoms.”

To this, Abbott’s targets have a prepared response. Online firms have long claimed safe harbor under Section 230 of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. The section treats them as ‘common carriers’, not as publishers. They would, therefore, be immune from defamation or copyright infringement lawsuits for material posted on their platforms. The reasoning is that they don’t control what users post, any more than the phone carrier controls voice conversations.

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Abbott and Hughes argue that certain firms have forfeited these exemptions. They’ve done so, Abbott says, by acting as publishers. Rejecting content for political, religious, or social reasons is the behavior of a publisher. And publishers don’t qualify for Section 230 protection.

Will the states prevail in court? Check this space for updates.

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World Wide Web Inventor Calls for Its Overhaul

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, is unhappy with it.  He has been saying for years that it has evolved into something far different from what he envisioned. Not much more than ten years ago, the web was a decentralized open platform, but since then a few corporate giants have come to dominate it. Google, Facebook, Netflix, and Amazon hold a near-stranglehold over online information and commerce, and web surfers have to surrender privacy to get much use out of the web.

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So what can we do to correct this sorry state of affairs? Well, Berners-Lee is hard at work on an alternative. Next week, he will launch a for-profit business called  Inrupt. Based on a crowd-sourced platform called Solid, it is meant to enable developers all over the world to wrest control of the web away from governments and corporate giants.

“It’s a historical moment.”

If Berners-Lee and his crew are successful, Google, Facebook, and Amazon will soon be struggling for survival. Berners-Lee is open about hisdesire not only to challenge them, but to take them down.. He jokingly (?) says his goal is ‘world domination’, and he says he wants a completely new internet. He said he is not consulting with Google or Facebook about how he will upend their business models. In his words: “We’re not asking their permission.”

“We have to do it now”, he said of Inrupt. “It’s a historical moment.”

Why now?

The need for a disruptive internet model has never been more obvious. For the last five years, one scandal after another has reminded us that our personal data is subject to manipulation and theft.

You’ve no doubt heard the news about Cambridge Analytica and the Obama reelection campaign hijacking Facebook user data to aid their political campaigns. Twitter and YouTube have been caught blocking, shadow-banning, or demonetizing conservative content. Google vacuums up personal data for ads, and apparently adjusts search functions for political reasons. In a recently released video of a Google corporate conference, several executives spoke of “our values”, with some pledging to use the platform to promote them. All of ‘our values’ were blatantly political.

We obviously- and urgently- need drastic overhaul of the world wide web. Otherwise, we will soon lose all semblance of honest and objective online information service.

Who’s in control?

Berners-Lee and Inrupt propose to address the failings of the dominant internet systems with a platform called Solid. With it, the user can create his own ‘personal online data store’ or POD. It will feature his calendar, music library, video library, contact list, to-do list, chat, and research tools. It’s like combining Outlook, WhatsApp, Slack, Spotify, and Google on the same browser- all available at the same time.

Most importantly, the data is under the user’s control. All the data he produces will be protected within his POD. The information will be secure, out of reach for his ISP, Google, Facebook, or any advertising engine- unless the user wants to release it. He can customize the degree of access he wants to provide for each bit of data.

This is a huge departure from the current internet model. In the last few years,  Google, Facebook, and other firms have been holding and controlling most online data in ‘silos’ that they built.

In the Solid web model, there are no silos.

What happens next?

Beginning almost immediately, developers can start building their own apps for the Inrupt platform. And Berners-Lee will spend the autumn tutoring developers and executives in building apps for Solid and Inrupt.

Tim Berners-Lee has set a daunting goal for himself. Can he really replace the current world wide web with something far better? Don’t bet against it. He has a record of bringing into fruition projects that others thought impossible.

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Secrets to Masking Your Identity Online

In a previous post, we offered a few tips about protecting online anonymity. We addressed browser security, VPNs, TOR, and proxy servers.

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Now we will explore a few other steps to masking your identity online.

Phone Security

If you’re serious about protecting your anonymity, the easiest way is to ditch your smart phone. Apple, which owns the iOS system, is obsessed with control; and Google, which owns Android, vacuums up your personal data for its advertisers. For anonymity, you need a pre-paid phone. It’s what police call a ‘burner’.

The advantage of using a pre-paid phone is that your name can’t be traced to it. Of course, GPS triangulation can still locate the phone, so you’ll have to throw it away to guarantee that your location won’t be tracked.

If you don’t want to give up your smart phone, masking your identity requires another step. You’ll need more numbers for your device. You can get extra temporary numbers through several apps.

There are some disadvantages with the temporary numbers. One is inability to call 911. Also, the pool of available numbers is small, and they’re often recycled, so you may receive calls you don’t want from people trying to reach someone who had your number before.

Available ‘burner’ number services include CoverMe, Too, Burner, and Hushed. Burner is the original.

Too charges $1.99 per month plus 3 cents per minute and 8 cents per text. CoverMe charges $4.99 for 130 texts and 130 voice voice minutes. Hushed charges $1.99 for 7 days or $3.99 per month- with limits on texts and calling. Burner charges $4.99 per month for a premium subscription with unlimited texts, calls, and pictures.

Most of Burner’s numbers expire after a specified period. Any number you don’t renew is burned. With the premium subscription, you can get a permanent second number.

In-Home Firewalls

If your computer is connected directly to a modem, then you’re vulnerable. Hackers are constantly probing IP addresses for routes into computer systems.

Masking your identity online may require a router with a built-in firewall. Such a router will assign an IP address to each home device on your network through Network Address Translation (NAT). These addresses will be visible only on your home network. This step alone will stop most direct attacks.

If your system doesn’t have a built-in firewall, you can buy a security suite with firewall software. Norton Symantec and Avast are two of the better-known providers of of such security packages.

To be continued…

You may want to do more for masking your identity online, such as securing your e-mail and finding out what information your device is giving away. We will cover these subjects in a future post. Watch for it.

 

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How can you protect your anonymity online?

A famous New Yorker cartoon from the dawn of the internet age features two dogs at a computer. One says to the other: “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” On the web, anonymity was virtually guaranteed.

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Those canines might not be so confident about online privacy now. With each passing month, we get more disquieting news that others are spying on our web traffic. It was governments at first. But in the last few years we have learned that Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook have been tracking our web usage so they can show us targeted ads. Trolls and stalkers have learned how to find the real identities behind user names we adopt for online comments.

Does this mean we should abandon hope for online anonymity? If we want to maintain our privacy, do we have to stay off of the internet?

In truth, there is only one guarantee of absolute anonymity. We’d have to stay offline entirely.

Short of this, we’re taking on some risk. Still, there are several ways to hold our odds of exposure and I D theft to a bare minimum. I will cover two of them here:

TOR, Proxies, and VPNs

One of the most effective ways to mask identity and location is to appear to be someone else at a different location. For this, you’ll need a virtual private network (VPN) or a proxy server. Not only can they mask your identity, they can enable surfing in other countries like the natives.

VPN services are easy to find. They protect traffic between your computer and internet servers, and they will mask your IP location and address. Suppose that , while working from home, you connect through your employer’s VPN. Websites will track your activity to corporate headquarters, not to your home.

For more advanced security, you may want a proxy server, a computer that redirects your web traffic. Like a VPN, it will mask your IP address. The proxy server also caches internet requests and responses, which will speed connection for your return visits to your favorite sites.

TOR is sometimes called ‘the onion router’ for its multiple layers of protection for anonymity. It provides a network of routes for data requests and downloads.

A few years ago, Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA had been spying on web traffic, giving special attention to TOR. But the NSA was only able to monitor its ‘exit nodes’. The agency could track what TOR was being used for, but couldn’t identify users.

Browser Security

How do you know your browser isn’t informing on you? Some, most notably Google Chrome, have been especially aggressive in tracking user traffic. Usually, the purpose of vacuuming up this data is advertising. You can’t be sure, though, that your web footprint will never be used for more sinister purposes. Since Google and Facebook have been caught censoring information for political reasons, it pays to be careful.

You can block your browsers ability to store your passwords. Of course, this can be inconvenient, since you probably have a separate password for each web service you use. A password manager can cache your passwords so you don’t have to remember them. Some password managers are free.

You could also activate your browser’s anonymous surfing mode. For Microsoft’s Explorer and Edge, it’s called In Private. For Firefox, it’s called Private Browsing, and for Chrome, it’s called Incognito. Activating the anonymous mode will block the browser from keeping records of websites you visit, your downloads, cookies, passwords, and cached material. Your browser may also offer a Do Not Track option in its settings bar. If it does, you’d be wise to activate it.

Anonymity through Browser Choice

Some browsers are better than others at protecting user anonymity.

Google is notorious for vacuuming up user data for use in targeted advertising. Bing and Yahoo also are aggressive in collecting user data.

Comodo Dragon, Comodo IceDragon, and Epic use Google’s Chromium rendering engine, but they don’t share user information with Google. DuckDuckGo, Brave, and Opera do not use Google, Bing, or Yahoo search engines. They don’t track your web usage or sell your data.

Stealth modes and specialized browsers won’t provide perfect web security. But they can keep websites from sending unrequested info to your computer, info that other sites can read to discern your surfing habits.

More to Come…

There are other steps you can take to protect your anonymity online. We will spell out these additional steps in another post.

 

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CONNECTED DEVICES & PRIVACY

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Can you keep a secret? No, you can’t, at least not for long. With ever more of your electronic devices, appliances, utility meters, fitness trackers, and home security systems connected to the internet, it’s nearly certain that at least one of them will rat on you sooner or later.

Could Your Devices Be Subpoenaed?

Allison Berman, writing for Singularity Hub, warned that the connected devices in your home could be subpoenaed as witnesses against you. She cited a 2015 murder case, for which police asked Amazon to turn over cloud-based data sent by an Alexa-enabled Echo device in the home of James Andrew Bates, in whose hot tub detectives had found the body of his colleague, Victor Collins. On the night of the murder, the device had been used for streaming music. The Echo device, equipped with seven mikes, listens constantly for the ‘wake word’ that will activate it, making it receptive to commands. Just before and after sensing the wake word, Echo begins recording sound and transmitting it to Amazon’s cloud.

Police believe the Echo device may have recorded audio germane to their investigation.

In the near future, police may solve crimes by interrogating refrigerators, thermostats, TV sets, stereos, phones, tablets, and security systems. With multiple electronic witnesses, they can obtain fairly accurate and comprehensive pictures of the crimes, as they seek to do by interviewing multiple witnesses to an auto accident.

Privacy laws regarding connected devices are very weak. Because the information is stored in the cloud, the owner or user of the devices doesn’t own the data they transmit. It’s not protected to the same degree that documents in his house are.

Could Your Connected Devices Be Hacked?

Of course, any connected device can be hacked. If Alexa is hacked, could a hostile party listen to everything you say in your home? And if you have twenty connected devices in your home, a hacker might obtain eerily accurate and complete information about what you do all day. Could he use it to blackmail you? What could a stalker do if he knows where you’ll be, when, and for what reason?

Hackers could also hijack your devices to spread false information about you. Patrick Frey, who blogs as ‘Patterico’, suffered a ’SWATting’ attack in 2011 after a hacker ‘spoofed’ his cellphone number to place a midnight 911 call. Pretending to be Frey, the caller said he had shot his wife.

Sheriff’s deputies pounded on Frey’s door and rang his doorbell. When he opened the door, they pointed their guns at him and told him to put his hands up. The deputies handcuffed Frey and placed him in a squad car. Then they awakened his wife, led her downstairs, and frisked her. After ascertaining that the children were safe, the police finally left.

The incident could easily have cost Frey his life. Cops are likely to be nervous in confronting a man they believe to be armed and to have just committed a murder.

Can You Trust Browsers and Social Media?

Loss of privacy need not require either hacking or law enforcement inquiry. Certain browsers, such as Google, and social media, such as Facebook, offer overly complicated terms of service– as long as 30,000 words. Few, if any, users read them. The rules are nearly inscrutable for a reason. They’re meant to protect providers from liability, not to protect your privacy.

Since you don’t pay for Google and Facebook services, you are their product. They earn their money through sale of advertising, so they want as much data about you as possible. Their advertisers demand it.

Two years ago, Facebook faced a media firestorm after the discovery that it had been manipulating the emotional states of thousands of users. Facebook had learned that the emotional impact of the images it showed users would affect the character of their posts. With this information, it could reinforce advertising messages.

You reveal far more through social media than you’d guess. MIT’s ‘Gaydar’ project confirmed that one could reliably infer that a particular subject was gay, based solely on his social media posts, even if he had never admitted it openly, and even if he was trying strenuously to keep it hidden. Another MIT project, called ‘Psychopath’, tracked social media posts to determine presence or absence of schizophrenia.

Can You Trust Your Smart TV Set?

On Monday, February 6, Vizio settled a lawsuit over claims that it had violated consumer privacy. The plaintiffs had alleged that Vizio’s connected ‘smart’ TV sets had been tracking ‘second by second’ data about customer viewing habits. To this, Vizio had allegedly added specific demographic information: age, sex, marital status, size of household, income, home ownership, and household value. The company is alleged to have sold this information to third parties. The third parties would use it to enable targeted advertising.

LG and Samsung have also been accused of collecting viewer data through their connected TV sets.

What Can You Do?

What can you do to protect yourself? Update your passwords often. Encrypt what you can. Always stay aware of when your connected devices are switched on.

It may help to assume that everything you do will become public- and live accordingly.

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RIGHT TO BE FORGOTTEN OVERTURNED

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We all want privacy. We have a right to it, don’t we? We want to forget our more embarrassing moments, and we want others to forget them, too.

Unfortunately, the internet’s memory is eternal. Every Facebook post we write, and every tweet we send, can come back to haunt us. Our friends, colleagues, and casual acquaintances have their own digital records of our lapses in judgement; and their audio, video, and text records can wreck our reputations. Follies we forgot about years ago can still thwart our job searches and romantic prospects.

It may be wise for us to manage our lives as if every moment outside of our homes is in the public record. After all, there is a very strong chance that it is.

But if we fail, what then? Are we doomed to relive our worst moments for the rest of our lives?

Some governments have decided to enforce digital privacy by statute. The European Union, among other entities, has embraced a ‘right to be forgotten’ rule. Under its terms, Google and other browsers will have to make certain information ‘unsearchable’ at the subject’s request. One’s embarrassing past will simply disappear from the internet. Nobody will ever find it again.

With the EU’s support, almost every expert expected other governments to adopt similar laws.

It’s not so certain now that this will be the case.

Search engines have challenged the ‘right to be forgotten’ in court. This morning, they scored one of their first major legal victories in the matter. Brazil’s highest court ruled that such laws place too heavy a burden on search engines, forcing them to become censors.

If other courts, in other states, follow suit, the ‘right to be forgotten’ may become unenforceable. The internet is international, and information can’t be confined within national boundaries.

We probably can’t rely on digital censors to protect our reputations. We may just have to assume that everything we do will become public- and act accordingly. And be careful with selfies.

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ROKU RELEASES $30.00 STREAMING STICK

Video without Cable or Satellite Subscriptions

If you’re seeking a way to stream video to your computer, it’s getting easier. And it costs less than ever before.

The market for internet video streaming devices is getting ever more crowded. One manufacturer after another is producing dedicated streaming sticks or boxes to meet the growing demand for video services without conventional cable or satellite subscriptions.

Roku’s New Streaming Devices

Roku, which has long been a leader in the market, has pulled ahead in the  industry’s price war with Monday’s introduction of the Express Player, a new streaming stick that will retail for a mere $29.99. This beats the $35.00 price for Google’s Chromecast Stick and the $40.00 price for the Amazon Fire TV Stick.

The Roku Express works on TV sets with HDMI connections, and handles 1080p HD signals. Another model, the Express+, works on older TV sets without HDMI ports.

Other New Roku Models

Beside the Express models, Roku released three upscale streaming devices on Monday: the Premiere, the Premiere+, and the Ultra. The Premiere handles Ultra HD or 4K streaming at up to 60 frames per second. The Premiere+ features the same capabilities, plus High Dynamic Range (HDR) support. The Ultra has all of the capabilities of the Premiere and the Premiere+, and it decodes Dolby Digital and Dolby Digital Plus Surround Sound. For local media playback, the Ultra also features a USB port. The Premiere will retail for $80.00, the Premiere+ for $100, and the Ultra for $130.00.

So far, Roku is the only manufacturer of dedicated video streaming devices to enroll in Comcast’s Xfinity TV Partner program, an effort to incorporate Comcast’s TV Everywhere app into streaming devices via open HTML5 standards.

All Roku devices will work with any internet service fast enough for video. This includes HughesNet.

Roku dominates the streaming device market, with about a 49% share.

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NET NEUTRALITY FIGHT TO END?

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The ongoing battle over the FCC’s ‘net neutrality’ rules has been bitter, and has hitherto offered no sign of abating. Several engineers at Stanford University, however, claim to have found a way out of the impasse. We don’t have to fight over this, they say. A technical fix is at hand.

The Stanford engineers say they have pioneered a technique that would enable  internet users to tell ISPs and online publishers when or if they want ‘preferential delivery’ for some data. (An ISP is an internet service provider.)

‘Net neutrality’ means ISPs must treat all data equally. They won’t be allowed to favor some content, nor to block or throttle other content.

The political battle over such net regulations has been loud and ferocious.

Professor Nick McKeown, Associate Professor Sachin Katti, and PhD Yiannia Yiakoumis say their new method, ‘Network Cookies’, could render the debate moot. An open internet and preferential delivery can coexist. The user decides what content gets favored delivery, while ISP administrators and content sources are unbiased; they throttle or speed data only in response to user preferences.

The Stanford engineering team field-tested the Network Cookies on 161 home networks connected with Google, sending boosted service requests from home routers to the ISP. The Network Cookies got heavy consumer use.

McKeown said, “…They’re simple to use and powerful. They enable you to fast-lane or zero-rate traffic from any application or website you want, not just the few, very popular applications. This is particularly important for smaller content providers– and their users, who can’t afford to establish relationships with ISPs. Second, they’re practical to deploy. They don’t overwhelm the user or bog down user devices and network operators…”

If this is all McKeown’s team says it is, then there may be no need for the Federal Government to weigh in on ‘net neutrality’ at all.

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SECURE BROWSING: CHROME CRACKS DOWN ON UNENCRYPTED SITES

Chrome, the most popular web browser in the world, will soon be getting rough with websites that don’t use proper encryption. Such sites can expose visitors to hacking and malware.

The next version of Google’s famous browser, Chrome 56, will be active in January 2017. The new version will warn web surfers about any sites that are still unencrypted. In a small window next to the address bar, Google will mark such sites as “Not Secure”. This warning will flag any sites using the older HTTP application protocol, rather than the more secure HTTPS. Later, these pages will also be marked with red triangles.

 

WHY CHROME IS CHANGING ITS SECURITY PROTOCOLS

Google’s current method for warning users is very different: a “neutral indicator”. Emily Schechter, an executive in the Chrome Security Team, explained why Google is changing its warning protocols. “When you load a website over HTTP”, she said, “someone else on the network can look at or modify the site before it gets to you.” Attacks via such means are not uncommon.

 

HOW YOU CAN SURF MORE SAFELY

Meanwhile, there are several steps by which you can make your Chrome browsing safer.

The easiest ways are to activate privacy extensions.

Disconnect is an extension that enables blocking of sites that would otherwise track you across the internet. Disconnect will also increase your connection speeds noticeably.

Adblock Plus and uBlock Origin will block autoplay video, pop-ups, and other annoying ads. They will not only keep advertisers from tracking your internet use, they will reduce your data consumption dramatically. If you worry about exceeding your data cap, you need an ad blocker.

Web of Trust is a worldwide community. It rates websites based on user experience. By regularly checking ratings on Web of Trust, you’ll have a better handle on which websites to avoid.

 

VIRTUAL PRIVATE NETWORKS

Logging in through a virtual private network (VPN) is an advanced approach to browser security. Some people call VPNs ‘the nuclear option’. They require somewhat more effort to set up than the Chrome extensions, and you’d have to pay for the best ones. The advantage of a VPN is that it encrypts your data, then routes it through secure external servers. Nobody- not even the NSA or your internet service provider- knows where you’re going on the web.

 

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