10 Pro Tips To Stay Anonymous Online
Stay Anonymous Online……..
Do you wish unknown apps, sneaky links and third-party websites to stop tracking you?
Yes, its the only thing that keep running in our mind while surfing. They won’t leave you alone for even a single minute.
Its almost a dire wish of every online user to eliminate the possible ways of being tracked. Though achieving it completely is close to impossible.
Yet there are certain ways in which you can diminish the risk of being tracked online.
So here are 10 pro tips to stay anonymous online.
10 Tips & Tricks To Stay Anonymous Online
- Go Incognito
- Switch To Secure Email Services
- Use a VPN
- Go For A Proxy Server
- Ditch The Common Search Engines
- Use A Password Manager
- Block Websites From Tracking
- Use Digital currency
- Keep A Habit Of Cleaning Cookies Data
- Block Javascript From Browsers
Now, lets dig a deep about all these pro tips which can help you to stay anonymous online.
Go Incognito:
This is the term we are all familiar with. Also, this is first thing which comes in our mind to go anonymous online. Almost all the common used browsers Google Chrome, Mozilla, Internet Explorer or safari have “incognito mode”.
Hence carrying out an anonymous browsing. With the use of this private browsing window, your internet search history and activity cannot be traced and remains hidden from all. It also lowers the risk of getting virus on your system. However, the major loophole of this is that your IP address, browsing activities can still be traced by your Internet service providers as well as the websites you visit. It does not store the cookies data.
Switch To Secure Email Services
Most of the email services (Gmail or Yahoo) does not provide email encryption, which in turn is more likely to raise privacy issues. Not only that, most of the cyber-crooks uses phishing emails to drop the payloads of the malware within. In such a case, opening the email or attachment from unknown sender can be a threat to privacy.
So, you can either use tools or extensions that encrypts your emails as such third-party may not be able to trace it. Or you can switch to secure email provider like Hushmail, which is becoming popular for private email services.
Some extensions like Mailvelope or SecureGmail are legitimate extension that encrypts the emails and decrypt it.
Use a VPN
VPN(Virtual privacy network) is another popular way to secure your online privacy. A VPN is usually capable of masking your IP address as well as your online identification. The strong encryption tunnel of the VPN prevents any website from tracking your identity even your browsing history.
We often discuss in our blog about the importance of VPN in securing privacy. While, there are plenty of reasons to start using a VPN, but still one of our post also highlights the Risks Of Public Wi-Fi, where a VPN can be very helpful.
Although, there are various VPN services available in the market like ShieldApps VPN, NordVPN, TunnelBear, and ExpressVPN so on.
Here, we do a little promotion of ShieldApps VPN. Why?
Because it just gives you want you need- the freedom to browse the web anonymously. As well as it protects your online browsing from third-party tracking, information snooping, IP-logging and much more. For this it uses strong encryption algorithm to mark your actual location, so that you can browse the internet freely without any restrictions.
Thus, in short it gives you complete anonymity, safety and privacy.
Click To Know More About ShieldApps VPN
Like most of the VPN services, it also requires a monthly subscription that will work on 3 devices. And most importantly, it is compatible with Windows, Mac(Apple) and Android. So, we think its worth a try.
Go For A Proxy Server
This one is also an age-old process of hiding your online identity. A Proxy server is more like a computer where your online activities and data are processed. So, it an intermediate between your original computer and the web. When the websites try to track you, they get hold of the proxy server instead of you -originally which makes them believe that your identity is that of the proxy server.
So, in such a case, you can use a proxy to mark your original IP address to another one. So, its like you are blocking or redirecting to the trackers to any unknown IP address which does not actually belongs to you. Hence, this will help to maintain online anonymity.
Like as VPN services, you can also find various proxy service that will do this for you. You can opt for paid or even some free ones which may offer you trails for some time. Some free ones you can check out are: ProxySite, KProxy, Hide.me, HideMyAss, Anonymouse and so on.
Ditch The Common Search Engines
Google, Yahoo, Bing are the most common search engine that are dominating the search engine market, since ages now. But sadly, their privacy is inversely proportional to their popularity.
Precisely, every second user will choose “Google.com” to satisfy their searching. Indeed, Google provides us the most accurate search results based on our query. However, the reason behind this is it keep tracking our browsing history, patterns, searches and keywords. Thus, Google may know more of about your interests.
However, in doing so it fails to provide the security of data as well as privacy. So, if you don’t want your search engine to track most of your data. Instead you must go for encrypted and secured search engines like Duckduckgo which shields your online identity enormously. As it does not tracks your searches.
Use A Password Manager
Most of us hate to remember the password, so we usually use the most easiest-to-remember passwords for our online accounts. Be it social media accounts, logins for several applications or banking accounts, we use like “123456” or “nick name” as passwords. These can be easily guessed by anyone.
Not only the cyber threats, if any one like your neighbours, friends or any unknown person, if get hold of your device can easily crack the password. Also, most of the hackers uses such loopholes to breach the security and get through your device. Like in one of our post we guide users about how to know if your Facebook account gets hacked?
Secondly, you should never choose the same password or “login with Facebook“, “login with Google” for other apps and services. As all the data contained within other apps gets somewhat synced and can be easily traced by third-party.
In short, passwords play an important role in maintaining the online anonymity.
So, if you are poor at initiating and remembering passwords let a virtual password manager tool do it for you.
If you still don’t familiar with what password manager can do for you, then read 7 ways password managers can be useful. A legitimate ans secure password manager like Dashlane will help you create strong passwords and saves them all in an encrypted form in vault. You just need to remember a master password to access it on all your devices. Thus the password manager will guard your privacy and maintain anonymity.
Block Websites From Tracking
We don’t even realize how vulnerable we become while browsing any website. However, the legitimate sites always ask for permission to track cookies in order to deliver personalized content. To prevent this, you can check your browser settings to block the websites from tracking.
But you may unaware of various other means through which websites can track your data. This can put a halt to your online anonymity. Thus, you can try using some browser extensions that can trap these web bugs. Ghostery, Privacy Badger, Adblock Plus, uBlock Origin are some of the popular anti-tracking extensions.
Use Digital currency
Online identity is extremely threatened when we make online payments. As our logins, credit card card details and payment history gets stored on the devices and apps. Thus, switching to cryptocurrency like Bitcoins, Darkcoin and so on for making purchases or donations can help to hide your online identity regarding such financial deals.
Keep A Habit Of Cleaning Cookies Data
Cookies, are the small codes that get automatically generated when we are browsing in any website, clicks, downloads, content preferences and so on. Websites store cookies to provide personalized experience to users, as such when they return to their site, the website could present contents, and ads based on past browsing behavior.
So, cookies say a lot about our online presence.
Oftentimes, the cookies used by the sites may contain some sensitive data like logins, clicks, payments, and so on. So, it is better to wipe off the cookies data frequently, to avoid providing your personal information to the websites, advertisers and illegitimate people.
However, it is hard to manually remove the cookies data from all of your browsers frequently, so it better to use dedicated tools to help you out.
For Mac, you can use Intego Internet Security that has lots of privacy features.
For Windows, you can SpyHunter that is a complete security suite offering anti-virus and optimization.
Block Javascript From Browsers
JavaScript codes are used by the websites, apps ans mostly everywhere on the web to customize the web experience. It helps to divide the sections based on various types of information like ads, content category, media and so on.
However, this is a completely legitimate thing to do. Thus, the Javascript contains various details about the browsing as well as the system.
But some compromised website may use the Javascript to inject intrusive pop-up ads, data-tracking and even injecting malicious codes. So, you don’t want the website to store such information about you or trouble you with annoying pop-up ads. Then you can choose to disable the Javascript from your browser.
However, this may trouble while loading the contents of the website properly. So, better to use a Javascript blocker like NoScript and ScriptSafe that help easily switch on/off the Javascript for a particular website. Also, it helps you to control the information you share with other websites.
So, these were 10 pro tips to stay anonymous online. Hope you enjoy reading it.
