With the talk of the town being about hackers laying hands on our important data, are we of the view that enough is not being done to protect the materials we send online? The clarion call is for more to be done by businesses, governments, and individuals.
As the British surveillance law is still going through government, the Anti-Privacy Law got the assent of the U.S. President which simply means that the FCC’s landmark rules to protect consumer privacy are wholly repealed, and the FCC is barred from passing any “substantially similar” new rules.
With this law in place, hackers can easily acquire your data from your ISP. The Anti-Privacy law has just simply ensured that.
The lid has been taken off the so much craved for cyber anonymity. Therefore, there is a need for individuals and businesses to get their privacy acts together.
Beside the fact that some US states are moving ahead with legislation to protect the data of their constituents, some options are available for businesses to still save themselves from the expected onslaught from cyber-criminals.
Option 1: The Onion Router (TOR) Browser
Since what we are talking about how you can protect yourself online, you may need to install the TOR browser. It protects you by randomly bouncing communications around a distribution of network of relays.
Tor prevents somebody nosing in on the traffic on your internet connection from learning the sites you visited and also the sites from learning your geolocation. You can use TOR on Microsoft Windows, Apple MacOS or GNU/Linux without installing any software.
There is a catch; TOR cannot, however, encrypt your traffic between the TOR network and its final destination. It can only anonymize the origin of your traffic and it will encrypt everything inside the TOR network.
Option 2: Research ISPs
The fact that government has put in place anti-privacy legislation in place should not worry you too much, as there are still some good ISPs that will not take advantage of this new law. Such ISPs clearly say they won’t collect, store, or sell customers’ browsing histories. You can search through different ISPs, review their pros and cons, and give the most reliable ones a shot.
Researching ISPs is important because the anti-privacy law won’t automatically make your data accessible to hackers; only ISPs can do that. The law merely grants ISPs excess freedom that can be hugely dangerous. Hence, the need to choose a reliable ISP.
Option 3: A Trustworthy VPN
Another alternative, and arguably the best and most popular option amongst the masses, is to subscribe to the services of a virtual private network.
A VPN service routes your data through their servers to encrypt your web traffic by tunneling the data and mask your IP address, thereby conferring on you the much sought after anonymity.
With the three options above, businesses can retain a certain level of safety and security while hoping something gets done about the Anti-Privacy law and similar laws.
Joseph Chukwube is a young tech enthusiast and an experienced content marketer. He is the Founder/CEO at Real SEO Growth, a link building agency, and Dream Chase Achieve, a lifestyle and self-improvement blog.