For many online services nowadays, gathering excessive user data is essential to their business model. Modern websites track your every move – not just on their sites but throughout the entire web. Then, they create a profile based on your interests and sell that information to data brokers, who in turn sell it to hundreds of online advertisers to “create a personalized online experience.” In reality, they just want to show you online ads you’re most likely to click on.
This is just one example of the many consequences of not maintaining online privacy in today’s digital age. There’s much more trouble if you don’t take the necessary steps to protect your personal information online. So, read on as I show you the most essential ways to maintain online privacy.
Understanding online privacy
The definition of online privacy appears pretty self-explanatory – it’s the practice of staying anonymous online. However, it is pretty broad and goes beyond simply hiding your specific personal details like name, surname, home address, email address, and phone number. It also encompasses more abstract things about you, like browsing history, personal interests, political leanings, online shopping habits, interpersonal connections, and beyond. After all, since practically all of your online activities are tracked, advertisers can create a pretty accurate profile about you.
Online privacy is crucial if you don’t want to be manipulated by online advertisers into buying stuff you don’t need. Since your online activities are out in the open, advertisers can send you ads explicitly targeting your current interests and try to sell you things vaguely related to what you’re currently looking for.
For example, when I was looking to buy a used car for myself, I spent a lot of time browsing car listing websites. After a few weeks, I noticed a significant increase in “sponsored content” about cars on my regularly visited sites. Naturally, I didn’t see ads because I use an ad blocker to maintain my sanity while browsing the web. Even so, social media sites like Facebook and Instagram served me entertaining posts related to cars.
It was clear that my interests at the time had somehow been leaked to advertisers, who started serving eerily specific ads. Thus, it was time to take steps to further improve my online privacy.
Top 6 ways to protect your privacy online
A journey of a thousand miles toward complete anonymity online begins with just a few steps. Let’s quickly review some of these simple actions you can take immediately to drastically improve your online privacy.
1. Use privacy-focused browsers and search engines
You should first ditch the popular web browsers and search engines that have become the default options on all devices. They started as acceptable options when there were no other alternatives, but now they’re unusable since they’re controlled by companies that thrive from collecting your data. This includes everything from the likes of Google and Microsoft. So, I recommend avoiding Chrome and Edge as your web browsers, as well as Google and Bing as your search engines.
The Mozilla Firefox web browser and the DuckDuckGo search engine are my go-to alternatives. However, these are definitely not your only options. Regarding browsers, you can also pick Brave, Vivaldi, and even LibreWolf if you want to take extreme measures. Most of these browsers will automatically eliminate trackers to improve your overall privacy. Meanwhile, LibreWolf will clear your browsing history and cookies each time you close it, which greatly improves your online privacy at the cost of convenience. It even comes pre-installed with uBlock Origin and DuckDuckGo as the default search engine. As for alternative search engines, consider Ecosia or Startpage.
If you’re unwilling to switch from Chrome and Edge for whatever reason, you should at least supplement them with privacy-enhancing extensions. The most obvious choice would be ad-blocking extensions, such as uBlock origin. Such add-ons will remove annoying ads and other online trackers that undermine your privacy. Another reliable option is Privacy Badger, which focuses only on eliminating invisible trackers. Naturally, the results will vary depending on which service you choose.
2. Always choose services with end-to-end encryption
If you stick with services utilizing end-to-end encryption, you can be confident that your personal information remains confidential. If you’re unfamiliar with encryption, it scrambles your data and makes it indecipherable to outsiders. Encryption is a pretty complicated topic, and there are many ways to implement it, so I suggest reading our dedicated article describing how encryption works.
It’s essential to use E2E encrypted communications to ensure that service providers can't see what you’re talking about. After all, open communication channels allow service providers to gather information about your conversations and sell that data to advertisers. Then, you’ll receive spam mail and adverts related to your conversations. This means you should use encrypted email, instant messaging, cloud file storage, and any other services you use daily.
3. Adjust the privacy settings on every service you use
Most online services you use do not have optimal privacy settings by default. Therefore, you should review each one and adjust your settings to ensure you aren’t sharing unnecessary data. For example, the screenshot below demonstrates that even NordVPN collects aggregate data by default.
Today, almost every website or app seeks to siphon your data for sale to advertisers or to train their AI systems. At the very least, you’ll be opted into sharing data about your device, crash reports, and app usage. While these details may not reveal significant personal information, they are still somewhat invasive. Moreover, services typically collect this data without your explicit consent, which is a significant red flag.
4. Use VPNs for secure browsing
Using a VPN is an excellent way to mask all of your online activities without relying on separate encrypted services. Basically, a VPN routes your web traffic through a remote encrypted server before it goes out to the internet. This action masks all your online activities while also hiding your location and IP address. As such, it’s an excellent all-in-one solution for staying anonymous from your ISP, network administrators, and threat actors on public Wi-Fi hotspots. You can also use it to bypass geographical restrictions and even online censorship.
However, keep in mind that VPNs don’t necessarily block online ads, trackers, and other privacy nuisances. While they are essential for maintaining online privacy, they won’t resolve all your anonymity issues.
5. Sign up for data leak monitoring services
While data breaches are common today, online services aren’t always diligent about informing users when their data has been leaked. After all, no one wants to admit that they made a costly mistake. Therefore, you should sign up for reliable third-party data leak monitoring services to stay informed about breaches as soon as they occur.
Have I Been Pwned is the most popular and arguably the most effective way to find out about data breaches. It’s one of the most well-established and reliable services for monitoring the dark web for leaked databases containing your email address. You can input a new email address to check for leaks immediately and sign up for future leak notifications. I especially recommend signing up for notifications because you never know when a new data breach will occur.
On the other hand, you shouldn’t rely solely on one service to stay informed about data leaks. For example, you can also use the Cybernews personal data leak checker as a supplementary option. Additionally, we offer a password leak checker if you want to examine data breaches from another perspective.
6. Use data removal services
Unfortunately, you can’t put the genie back in the lamp regarding personal data exposure. What I mean is that there’s no realistic way to remove your data from the web on your own. You’d have to send numerous data removal requests to hundreds of data brokers, which is a daunting task in itself. Even worse, they might not comply at first, requiring even more effort.
Thankfully, data removal services exist that can send these data removal requests on your behalf. You’ll need to provide your personal information so these services can erase any potential traces of you from the internet. Unsurprisingly, most of these services are paid, so I understand if you’re not eager to take this step.
4 additional online privacy tips
Online privacy is closely tied to cybersecurity, meaning stronger security leads to better online anonymity. Here are a few additional precautions you should take to enhance your overall security, which will also improve your online privacy.
1. Use strong, unique passwords
Data breaches are increasingly common, and it's likely that some of your account logins have been compromised. Despite my efforts to minimize the number of online accounts I create, this has happened to me as well.
The best thing you can do to protect your online accounts is to use strong and unique passwords for each account. This will ensure that one data leak won’t make multiple accounts vulnerable.
Understandably, creating and memorizing complex passwords can be challenging, which is why I recommend using a password manager. It not only helps you generate strong passwords but also stores them securely in an encrypted vault that only you can access.. There are plenty of excellent free password managers to choose from, but paid options are also worth considering if you need more convenience.
2. Use passkeys
Conventional passwords are quickly becoming outdated with the rise of passkeys, which are superior in almost every way. The only downside is the lack of widespread adoption by websites and the public in general.
Passkeys work using a combination of biometric and cryptographic authentication to provide unique login credentials for each service. You don’t have to create or memorize anything, which vastly improves the overall user experience and convenience. And since passkeys are built on the WebAuthentication standard, they’re compatible across numerous operating systems, devices, and browsers.
However, remember that you’ll need to use a password manager to manage your passkeys. I recommend picking something suitable for conventional passwords and passkeys alike so you’ll have no trouble transitioning between the two.
3. Enable two-factor authentication
2FA (two-factor authentication) is one of the most simple yet effective ways to protect your accounts from theft. As the name suggests, 2FA is a second authentication step alongside the usual password required to log in. That means even if your password leaks, it won’t be enough for a malicious hacker to steal your account.
The most secure way to use 2FA is with an authentication app on your smartphone. When logging into an account with 2FA, you’ll need to enter a code from the app. This code changes constantly, making it impossible for attackers to reuse it. Additionally, each account has its own unique code for extra security.
4. Use a privacy-focused OS
Windows, the most popular desktop OS worldwide, does not have user privacy in mind. Nowadays, you can’t even install Windows 11 without connecting to the internet and logging in with a Microsoft account. Moreover, many of its default settings are set to collect vast amounts of data about you. I think the Recall feature is an excellent example of this.
MacOS is similar in this regard since it heavily relies on proprietary technology, but at least it has a slightly better track record of protecting user privacy. Personally, I’m not really interested in the Apple ecosystem because once you start using it, you’re completely locked within it. I like to keep my options regarding device manufacturers open.
It shouldn’t surprise you that I recommend Linux as the most privacy-oriented desktop operating system. For starters, this OS is completely free and open-source. Many security experts have reviewed and contributed to its codebase, meaning it’s robust and reliable. Additionally, it has plenty of distributions with different user needs in mind. That means you have plenty of options to choose from until you find what suits your personal needs.
However, I understand that switching to an entirely new OS is daunting for most. As such, I recommend starting with a beginner-friendly version like Ubuntu or Linux Mint. You can install these as a second boot option on your main PC or a separate device for testing.
As you can see, I haven’t touched on mobile operating systems since they are completely different from PCs. Once again, many claim that the popular Android and iOS systems aren’t great for privacy, but sadly, there aren’t many viable alternatives to choose from. Moreover, installing a different operating system on a smartphone is much more complicated than on a computer.
Resources for further learning
The tips above are just a starting point for improving your online privacy. There’s still much more to learn, and the best anonymity practices might change over time. As such, it’s vital to keep an eye on some of the best learning resources available to know the latest developments regarding online privacy and cybersecurity in general.
It should come as no surprise that I recommend Cybernews as one such outlet. Our primary goal is to inform readers about the latest cybersecurity news, but we also offer plenty of helpful guides and tutorials for online privacy.
A less biased recommendation is Privacy Guides. This website focuses solely on online privacy and is a great place to learn more about the technical side of things. Moreover, it includes many reliable product recommendations for staying anonymous and secure.
Conclusion
Maintaining your online privacy is more important than ever since almost every online service wants to collect and profit from your data. Additionally, since so much of our daily lives are intertwined with technology, companies can harvest an immense variety of information about us. Then, they create scarily accurate profiles about us and show us advertisements catered to our current interests.
Unfortunately, prioritizing online privacy isn’t always the most convenient choice, as it often requires using less mainstream tools and taking extra precautions while browsing the web. However, I believe the effort is well worth it. In the end, you'll be able to enjoy a more secure online experience without being bombarded by ads tailored to exploit your personal information.
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