There are several ways to cover your tracks and hide your online identity, and none of them require special privacy hider tools or programs that you have to buy. Below are several tips anyone can follow to hide what you search for, keep your personal information off of the web, mask your IP address, and more.
Why Is Hiding Your Identity Important?
It’s far too easy for our personal details to leak on the internet, either via hackers, companies selling the information, or some other dishonorable method. Securing your identity as you use the web helps keep your personal details at a minimum so that you don’t have to worry so much about identity theft, harassment, privacy intrusion, spam, etc. There are numerous ways to do this, such as using an anonymous proxy server and connecting to a VPN before using the internet. Although you can’t remove your information for good because it’s all in the public domain on a variety of websites, and continually gets updated, you can do your best to delete what’s out there right now by following the link below. If you don’t want this information available, you have to make it a habit to either clear your browser’s history and cookies or use the browser’s private mode. Securing your computer with a password is helpful in this case, too. There are two clear benefits to doing this: any spam that gets sent through that new account is delivered to a specified email address and not your “primary” one; and should the account be hacked, your other accounts won’t also be compromised because you’re using different email addresses for those. There are several security and privacy minded email services that are great for this, but you can also sign up with a temporary email account that expires shortly after you use it or just use another standard email service. Some email providers act as a middleman between you and whoever it is you’re emailing. You can send and receive emails using your primary email account without ever revealing it to recipients. The makers of the private search engine DuckDuckGo offer this kind of email service through their app. An alternative to using a second email account is to use a service that lets you borrow other people’s account details. BugMeNot is the best example of this, where you can search for a site to see the username and passwords users have submitted.
Use a virtual debit card service like Privacy or Blur that lets you share payment details that aren’t directly tied to you. Send a cryptocurrency instead of “real” money. Buy a gift card or prepaid card, and then share those details instead of your real number. Use a mobile payment app so that you don’t have to share your bank account number or card details.
When you connect to a website with an RSS feed, you can have updates from that site emailed to you or have them pop up in your RSS reader program. At no point do you have to open any web pages, log in, or leave a trace of what you’re viewing. There are lots of free apps that can remove spyware from your computer. If you suspect that you have spyware, or you want to minimize your chances of getting it in the future, you should install and run an anti-spyware app. Either way, the settings are hard to keep under control, and not knowing what you’re allowing can potentially compromise your safety. Learn how to hide on Facebook or what to do to make Facebook private. Also, learn how to get a grasp of the Facebook privacy settings so you can make the changes you want to. The task is simple: after you’re finished with a website you’re logged in to—like your bank account, social media page, email—just log out. If you stay logged in, you’re not really hiding anything. Anyone else who uses the computer after you will be able to see not only who used the computer but also find all your emails, be able to post things to your social networks, reset your passwords, etc.
