How can I protect my online activity?
Defining the problem
Being online is one of the biggest threats to data privacy. Websites, browsers and search engines track what you do online, the main aim being to target advertising to match what your interests. By tracking and collecting all your keystrokes, web sites and pages that you visit as well items that you buy, machine learning algorithms can build a profile of you. This profile may include assumptions about your politics, religion, health, interests and financial standing.
Practical Solutions
The best way to protect yourself is to use tools that respect your privacy and that won’t collect your data. These tools spilt into browsers and search engines. In addition, using a Virtual Private Network hides your computer or mobile device online address (called an IP address).
Private Browsers
Google’s Chrome is the most popular browser but Google makes its money from selling advertising, so it has a vested interest in posting targeted adverts and collecting data from your browsing activity. There are a number of free alternatives to choose including Brave. More detailed information on alternative browsers can be found here.
Private Search Engines
Search engines are what we all use to find things on the internet. Unfortunately many of the popular ones like google search are data collection tools for advertising. As with browsers the objective is to collect data that can be used for targeted advertising. In addition the results that you get may be biased towards those that have paid the most to be in the top 10.
These search engine collect your computers address (IP address), location your search query that can contain a lot of personal information. For example you might be interested to find out about a medical condition that you have been diagnosed with or particular financial products. If you search for a particular type of job, then this information can added to your profile, indicating that you might be out of work and even what your work skills might be.
Search engine privacy is a fairly complex issue, some “private” search engines like DuckDuckGo do store your search queries but they are anonymised. There can also be concerns over where any data is stored because privacy may be compromised by the laws of the country in which the server is based. DuckDuckGo’s server for example is stored in the USA. The US does have its own surveillance programs carried out by various branches of government.
One of the free alternative search engines to google is DuckDuckGo, available in many browsers drop down menus where you can customise your search engine. Some people are not even aware of the alternatives available in the major non private browsers. It’s best to use alternative search engines with private browsers like Brave.
Be aware also that most private search engines do serve up adverts based on your search terms, that’s how they make money to offer the service, however they do not use data from other sources nor build a profile of you.
Most private search engines use other sources like bing to obtain search results, but mojeek, based in the UK, actually uses its own “crawler’ (the engine that trawls the internet to collect information that can be searched). You might want to try different private search engines to see if they return good results.
No free product is likely to be 100% private! In an ideal world we would have tools paid for by subscription that would not sell advertising. More detailed information on alternative search engines can be found here.
Virtual Private Networks (VPN)
A Virtual Private Network hides your computer address (IP address) and location whilst also encrypting your your traffic. Public WiFi networks are not secure and are easy places for hackers to access your internet traffic. A VPN will help to avoid this. The best VPNs are all subscription services, beware of free products as they have in some cases been found to leak user data!
NordVPN is a popular product that performs well but it cannot be installed on a router. Alternatives are Surfshark and vyprvpn. For more information and a comparison of the best products see here.