Let’s all be
realistic about Internet privacy through ISP providers. Recently, the Republican ruled
congress has made a big decision about the future of your online data, and many
people aren't happy about it.
On March 28, Congress voted along
party lines to kill a set of
rules adopted by the Federal
Communications Commission in October of last year that would have kept all Internet
Service Providers or ISP’s, at bay because they needed to ask your permission before
it collected certain personal information. President Donald Trump signed the
resolution on April 10, turning it into law.
So does this mean your ISP now
has free rein over everything you do online? Not really, but it means that it
no longer needs your permission to gather data from you that passes through its
servers and sell it to other companies for marketing purposes. Also, should any
law enforcement or government agency demand for your data, ISP’s may cough it
up without your permission?
To counter this, you can get the
services of a VPN.
A
Virtual Private Network or VPN allows you to connect to the Internet through a
server run by a VPN provider and separate from an ISP provider. All data
traveling between your computer, phone or tablet, and this “VPN server” is
securely encrypted. As a result of this setup, VPN’s:
§
Provide privacy by hiding your Internet activity from your ISP. Your
ISP will still receive data from you since they provide your Internet service.
However, all data they receive will become encrypted, and thus, rendered
unreadable.
§
Allow you to evade censorship by the government
or through an ISP.
§
Allow you to “geo-spoof” your location in order to
access services unfairly denied to you based on your geographical location, or hides
your location when you are on holiday.
§
Protect you against hackers when
using public Wi-Fi.
§
Allow you to P2P download in safety.
In
order to use VPN, you must sign up for a contract for a VPN service, which
typically costs between $5 – $10 a month. Note that using a VPN service does not replace the need for an Internet
Service Provider, as it is your ISP that provides your Internet connection in
the first place.
How do
you know that a VPN is trustworthy?
§
VPN’s
are expensive to run so a free VPN makes you the product and can’t be trusted.
§
Inquire
from others who use VPN’s and identify which providers they trust the most.
§
A
trusted VPN will have a “no tracking” and “no logs” policy, meaning that they
don’t gather any data from their users.
§
Trusted
VPN’s use “shared” ISP’s so they are not easily tracked.
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