Online privacy is a big thing, especially for large multi-national companies where they store and keep customers’ private data and financial details, but this doesn’t mean online privacy is something that only big multinationals need to worry about.
There’s no shortage of handy browser extensions and programs out there, mostly for free that will help you achieve anonymity online. In this update, we’re going to cover the ones I think are best and least intrusive to use.
USE A PASSWORD MANAGER
If you find yourself struggling with the myriad of passwords, you need to remember for all of the services you use you might find LastPass handy. What you can do with LastPass is store all of your working passwords so you only need one master password.
If you use the same password for everything or weak passwords to make them easier to remember, you open yourself to getting your online accounts hacked easily. Using LastPass to store all of your passwords covered with a very strong master password you’ll be able to stay more secure, and only ever need to remember the one password to access LastPass.
USE INCOGNITO MODE
This handy feature is built into the Google Chrome browser, however, there is a private browsing mode on most web browsers so it doesn’t matter which one you like to use.
Private browsing means your web browser simply won’t store “cookies” from websites, login information and browser history, meaning you can browse around without leaving a trail on the computer you’re browsing from.
While using this feature won’t completely hide your browsing activity from the online sphere it will hide it from anyone you share the computer and web browser with.
DON’T USE PRIVATE SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS FOR YOUR BUSINESS
I can’t stress how important this is, even if your business is your name you should have separate social media accounts for both private and business usage. Make sure they have different passwords, and you keep the business account content strictly related to business.
Avoid accidentally posting business related information to your private account and vice-versa.
Keep in mind that if you deactivate an account such as Facebook, your files, pictures, status updates and everything you’ve ever done on the website is still there on the Facebook servers stored in case you decide to reactivate.
To fully remove unwanted social media accounts, make sure you delete that account not deactivate it!
