The leakage of personal data is a mass phenomenon in the modern Internet environment. Do you still believe, that online attackers have work hard to steal information about you? In fact, most users do not think about the ease with which they personally spread information about themselves.
Often this happens when a user visits an insecure site or uses weak software. In such a situation, there is only one way out: hide your location on the Internet so that not every scammer can recognize you and use your personal information to harm you. How to protect yourself correctly and safely — go discuss.
Why online privacy is important and how realistic it is to achieve
Privacy on the Internet. Now everyone talks about its importance from every angle: on TV, in the news, in schools during digital literacy classes, and even on public transport while you are driving home from work.
It seems that just a few years ago, this phrase was not so important and even more frightening? Really don't you think.
After the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the whole world literally rushed to the Internet, the problem of protecting personal online data became enormous. Phishing and scamming are still exposed both average users and government servers, large corporations, and technology giants.
Internet privacy is the human rights protection to store personal information and not distribute it when connected to the World Wide Web. Such protection includes personal and financial information, correspondence, preferences, search history — everything related to data collection.
How to avoid an unsafe environment? Firstly, as a user, you are protected by the laws of the country you are in. Secondly, using of 2FA significantly reduces the risk of personal data theft.
It is a two-step user verification technology using the Verify API. Today, companies of all sizes use it to:
- protect your business from fraud;
- increase customer confidence;
- have the ability to authenticate users anywhere in the world.
A loophole for scammers can be an IP address that you are assigned when you go online. To explain in simple terms: this is a cipher containing information about the user, including his location, and information about the Internet provider.
Of course, there is a reasonable collection of such data on some sites — after all, web administrators also worry about the security of their resources. However, if your location details are revealed, they can become the property of the entire online community, and not the best part of it.
Four Ways to Prevent Your Location from Being Exposed on the Internet
There are many ways how to hide your location on the Internet. Some users use powerful antivirus software, while others use strong passwords. We will share simple methods for protecting your personal anonymity on the Internet that you can apply right after reading the article.
Turn off geolocation on devices and browsers
It is the easiest and one of the most effective ways to hide your location on the Internet. Let's consider two cases in which you can disable geolocation, and the nuances associated with such actions.
On the device
To determine where the user is, your favorite gadgets (smartphones, laptops, tablets, smartwatches, and even TVs) use GPS and Wi-Fi. You can generally disable these features on devices separately from the programs that require them.
Please note that in individual applications you will have to configure geolocation each time, give access and permissions, so in any case, some servers will have access to this information.
In the web browser
Geolocation services can also be disabled in browsers so that information about them is not transmitted to third-party websites. As a rule, most programs offer such a function, and some separately allow you to block requests for pages that require data about the user's physical location.
To hide your location on the Internet, go to your browser settings and change the privacy settings.
Browsers also offer private options such as "incognito". There is a misconception that this mode also does not track the user's location. But it is not so. Actually, your GEO is recorded, but cookies are not.
Remember to clear cookies and search history
Cookies are small text files containing information about user activities on the Internet. When you visit a web page, the server records all steps and can share this with third parties on the Internet.
It is almost impossible to deal with this: completely disabling cookies can cause browser crashes and complicate web surfing. Nevertheless, we recommend that you periodically clean (preferably after each exit from the web) your browser history and saved cookies.
Please, be aware: some sites may require you to re-enter your password and login after deleting such files.
Install privacy-oriented browsers
Another way to hide your location on the Internet is to replace your usual browser with a special web surfing program focused on privacy and security. Such programs encrypt the user's personal data and send it through repeaters, thereby hiding the IP address and geolocation.
This method of hiding your presence on the Internet is also called onion routing since each layer of the cipher “peels off” from the previous one.
Such browsers may seem unusual to use, they lack some useful and convenient features, but from the point of view of security and privacy, this is the most successful solution.
Looking for the right and reliable VPN server
VPN servers are becoming increasingly popular as one of the most effective methods to hide your location on the Internet.
These are virtual private networks, that hide the user's Internet traffic by redirecting it to a secure server. VPNs encrypt your data into an unreadable file and forward it in a secure packet to a new protected IP address.
VPN servers help hide your physical location from third parties. This peculiar shield is almost impossible to hack, decipher or trace.
VPNs can be built into the device or come as separate apps. We recommend using them, for example, when you connect to a public Wi-Fi network. Please note that VPN services have different levels of security, and most free programs still track user data.
In conclusion
Now, it is important to monitor the security and confidentiality of personal information on the Internet. Decision Telecom provides a state-of-the-art Verify API service that helps businesses protect themselves and their customers. Our verification can be used after a simple API integration with your CRM, web-, and mobile resources.
Be careful and take steps to hide your location on the Internet. Protecting personal privacy should be a daily process, and it requires constant attention to the latest methods of collecting data about your geolocation.
