Online Privacy Does Not Exist!

 

Recently there has been a huge uproar in the world against WhatsApp's new privacy policy. It seems like all the people out of nowhere realised that yeah online privacy is a thing. Its not like people cared about online privacy before this event. So WhatsApp has a new policy that states that it is gonna a look at a shit ton of your personal information and then send it back to the Facebook ad program. Of course people panicked and went after WhatsApp. People stated that how the entire point of WhatsApp has been privacy and the privacy angle is gone. Well too bad that people did not know that WhatsApp has been sending your data to Facebook since 2014 when it got acquired by Facebook for a whooping $19 Billion. Do you think Facebook is an idiot? It spend $19 Billion to improve the service? No! It was a business move. Facebook spent a huge ton of money because it saw WhatsApp as huge opportunity to earn a ton of money. WhatsApp is Huge all around the world. It has over a 2 Billion users and it is the perfect opportunity to earn money because even if people do not use Facebook, they will still use WhatsApp and it will still be used to make money through ads. And not only WhatsApp, all the other apps tied to the Facebook infrastructure like Messenger and Instagram send your data to Facebook so that the algorithm can attract you through ads and by showing content that you like. The only difference now is that before they were doing it secretly but now they have to show that they are doing this thanks to government pressure. But the thing that does not change is that Facebook is definitely taking way too much of your data and some of it is straight up unnecessary and plus Facebook has been caught in some shady stuff in the past that I do not really trust it anymore. But like if you use Facebook, your privacy is already gone but still Facebook is scary. Like I made a Facebook account and linked no one with it but still it was suggesting me my family members and my friends as if it knows me more than I know myself! And boy that was a scary experience on a completely clean Facebook Account.

So after this, people started to find other more secure apps or messenger like Signal and Telegram and yes they are way more secure and don't have any profit earning ad algorithm(yet). But the thing is, most people are not gonna leave the service just because of the new privacy laws no matter what happens. WhatsApp is a part of a culture now. It is now a part of the life style of billions of people. Your families are on WhatsApp, your friends are on WhatsApp, your professional contacts are on WhatsApp, your family and friend groups are on WhatsApp, etc and no one will leave that because of some anti-privacy policy. After all you are a product and Facebook will earn its money through you. And the funny thing is that Facebook is not the only company that does this. All major companies even Google itself does this because they will sell your data to advertisers to earn money because after all they have a company to run and servers to maintain and that requires a lot of money. Only difference is that everyone trusts Google more than Facebook. Even YouTube uses your data to show you relevant advertisements based on your location, search history, etc and all these mega corporations know about you more than you know about yourself.

From Left to Right - Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram

Lets say you finally decide to be done with the privacy policy and decide to switch to maybe Telegram or Signal, two apps that are way more secure than WhatsApp, they still need a bare minimum of your data and they still can see your IP address and phone numbers. Telegram literally keeps the entirety of your chats in its servers which it has the keys for and only when you use the 'Secret Chat' option than your chat gets end to end encrypted. So even while using the likes of Telegram and Signal, it is impossible to be 100% private online and you never know when they can change their policy in future. 

If you really want to attain the maximum level of privacy online then there are a few things to do :-

Use of DuckDuckGo Search Engine - This is the first and the most simplest way to attain some privacy. Instead of using Google as search engine, it is way better to use DuckDuckGo. DuckDuckGo unlike google does not save your search history because it does not use your trackers, cookies, search history, location, behavior, etc to show you ads. Instead it just uses what you are typing at the moment on keyboard and shows you ads based on that. once you close the page, the data is gone and it not on the DuckDuckGo servers.

Use Of Virtual Machine - Virtual Machines are basically virtual environment that can be created using a software like VirtualBox on your computer. These Virtual Environment can be used to like emulate an operating system within your actual system and whatever you do on that system will be completely separated from your main system. You can manually edit the ID and hardware information of that virtual machine and that is what all the other application on the VM will see instead of your actual device ID. A great way to separate work environment from personal environment.

Use Of VPN - Virtual Private Network or VPN is the most important thing when it comes to maintaining your online privacy. When you connect to the internet, your service provider can access your online identity through your IP address and can see your location. It can also see the activities that you are doing on the internet. It can see all the websites you visit. VPN makes it very hard for even the police to track your online activity. It changes your IP address to some other country and the signal may even bounce between different countries which hides your actual IP address and your online activity.

Use Of Brave Browser - Brave browser is a fast and smooth browser that is based on chromium which means it works like chrome and even supports chrome extension but unlike chrome, this browser puts heavy emphasis on privacy. It has the inbuild ability to block most ads and trackers that take away your data.

Having Separate Email Accounts For Work and Personal - Another really simple way is that people should keep their personal email accounts separate from one another. This way your work messages and your personal messages do not collide and turn into a mess.

You see even after following the most intense steps, it is impossible to attain complete privacy online. Once you connect to the internet, no matter how many defenses you have, you still end up giving the most minute data. But hey, 99% privacy it better than 10% privacy right? In the End, online privacy is really a myth and is unattainable. The only way you are gaining 100% privacy is by turning off your Internet connection completely and never ever connecting again. They cannot track you if you do not use their services right? Unless they added a chip to your brain when you were born.