Protecting your privacy using decentralised technology
‘Do you have anything to hide?’ This was the normal response to anyone who doesn't want the regular surveillance programmes line the CC cams or border checks or the casual questioning from the law enforcement. The narrative has quickly changed with regards to these things as the state and other government tried to miss use these things. Countries like Germany (where I live) has implemented some strict privacy laws due to some anecdotes from their history.
The only place where our privacy isn’t ensured is the internet. The current web which we use is full of hackers and trackers. The internet has evolved in such a way that the tech companies could deliver ads and other information directly to you. They harvest every data, from location to your communication history. Not just the companies but the governmental bodies too, some governments have implemented rules that allow them to overlook the digital activities of their residents and citizens in no so ethical way. The great firewall of china and the massive data collection by the NSA are some examples of intervention to our privacy. What the heck countries like India will prosecute anyone for speaking their ideas, The Indian government to sue the environmental activist Greta Thunberg int the wildest example of these things. Count me on this I used to write articles anonymously just because of this reason.
So enough of mumbo jumbo, and stat sealing everything privacy tight. Your data starts to leak as soon as you are connected to the internet. Just turning on the browser will expose your IP to the internet service providers. then the sites your are accessing will, of course, collect a very large amount of data from you. some times apps on your smartphone will also offer a great amount of threat to you. Apps like Facebook actively collect which apps are installed on your device and how often you use them.
I have carelessly installed Facebook messenger on my phone back in 2018, from then they actively tracked my location without explicit permission. look at me roaming around Cologne, DE back in 2018.
So to make everything waterproof we have to start with the internet connection itself. The internet service provider currently knows what you are accessing on the internet. they can even collect how and what you do. even passwords are exposed if you are using one of those websites with HTTP. in order to mask these connections lets use a VPN.
VPN
VPN stands for the virtual private network. they are literally private network opened for you to access the internet. VPS will send all your requests to the internet using a secures channel so nor the ISP or any other middleman will know what you are accessing. And the website at the end will also know who is requesting the data. But I a mentioned earlier the current internet is designed just to harvest your data. We have only replaced a snake with a wolf. The VPN companies normally store your log and sell them to ad networks and governments.
Sorry, you might be really confused is it really possible to protect yourself, yes of-course. all you have to use is a VPN which uses a decentralised network. The advantage is that you are not going to interact with one centralised server but your data will be made into small packets and distributed across different servers. No individual can compile these data thus securing your privacy.
I really recommend Mysterium VPN which works on decentralised nets and blockchain. This VPN takes your privacy to the next level as they accept crypto to provide you with a pseudo-anonymity. If you don't want to deal with crypto then head on to portals.network they are also built on Mysterium network but accepts credit cards and other payment methods. I have made a deal for you at the portal network for you. Get 20% fro lifetime if you use the code tony20. this will give you a deal for around $3.99 a month.
To find out more about the Mysterium VPN and the tech check out this video, where I chat with Jaro the product head of MYST about problems of the internet.
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Presearch.org and DuckDuckGo
We have sealed the connection problem now lets deal with each individual websites. The next big problem for a normal user is the GOOGLE. Yes admit it or not google tracks a lot about you! The only thing you can do is to replace the google search engine with a more privacy-centric one. No, I'm not talking about bing or Chinese search engines. But consider using DuckDuckGo. Duckduckgo is a privacy-focused search engine. They don't track you or tries to hit you with personalized content. The Unfortunate problem with this search engine is that it's not that advanced as the one from google. So all the google lovers don't worry I got you covered. Take a look at the presearch.org its a privacy-focused search engine which aggregates results from different providers including google.
Presearch.org is a community-powered project. The working mechanism is really simple. The Nodes searches for your queries on different search engines, eliminate duplicates and provide you with a clean and awesome result. Each search on the engine will improve its ability to provide better content. So the users are incentives with PRE tokens to search on their website. An anonymous searching, then this is your deal.
Brave browser
Each website is trying to track you. So we have to use a browser which automatically blocks all the trackers and scripts run to fingerprint you. The brave browser carefully engineers website and block all tracker and ads for you. check out the image over there. This browser has blocked more than 144400 trackers and ads on the websites I have visited just this month. Websites with these kinds of scripts take extra bandwidth and use your data to load you the ads. So with this browser, I was able to save more than 4GB in data volume just by not allowing them to load. If you want to earn some extra buck while browsing the web then the brave browser has you. They pay you around 3¢ per ad if you want to. I have opted to show me 5 ads every hour while using the internet. So that a pretty good deal.
Conclusion
It isn't that easy to regain your privacy over the internet. You have to make use of vpns, privacy browser and special search engines to do so. But the internet we are using is evolving into a privacy-centric one. There are protocols like IPFS and decentralized domain services like .eth, .zil and .crypto which aimed to take your privacy to a better level. All of these things are at the primitive level and needs mass adoption.
I am really happy if you could follow me on Twitter.
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>The first episode of Speakmuch.<br> A small Chat with Jaro from <a href=”https://twitter.com/MysteriumNet?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@MysteriumNet</a> about the protection of user privacy using a dVPN. Watch subscribe and comment.<a href=”https://t.co/CrtyluDq5i">https://t.co/CrtyluDq5i</a></p>— Tony Thomas (@TONYThomasin) <a href=”https://twitter.com/TONYThomasin/status/1329915318521753600?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 20, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset=”utf-8"></script>
If want to know more about me then check out my website at tonythomas.in
I also used to write some articles on publis0x check me out at publish0x.com/@tonythomas
