Basic Guide to Improving Your Privacy on the Internet.

This is a basic guide on improving your privacy on the internet and is aimed towards users. This is by no means the most in depth you can go into securing your connection and keeping your face off of Google searches but this is a huge step in the right direction for anyone who has never done anything to make their lives on the internet a safer, more secure and private place.

Why should you care about your privacy on the Internet?
It's become a recent trend with some companies, schools or organizations to ask for your Facebook, Twitter and other social networking site username and password so they can "better" understand you and to make sure you're not into any trouble they don't know about. Maybe your government likes to wiretap your internet without a warrant, trying to pass draconian bills that try to censor free speech on the internet and is bought out by the MPAA and the RIAA who likes sue "criminals" into oblivion for songs they've downloaded. Maybe you just want to make it much harder for co-workers and peers to find your Facebook. This is why I am writing this very basic guide on how to improve your privacy on the internet, lets begin.

Browser Add Ons:
A very easy way to secure and encrypt the content you view on the internet is through simple browser plug-ins such as HTTPS Everywhere which requests SSL (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Sockets_Layer) for every site that you visit. When you use HTTPS for a website, the content you receive and send is encrypted from point to point, preventing prying eyes on the content you are viewing.

HTTPS Everywhere
Chrome: https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Firefox: https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere

Why use Do Not Track?
Another easy way to add to your privacy is by installing an add on that adds do not track requests to all pages you view. This is a privacy feature that allows you to let a website know you would like to opt-out of third-party tracking for purposes including behavioral advertising. It does this by transmitting a "Do Not Track" HTTP header every time your data is requested from the Web.

Do Not Track
Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/do-not-track/gpgaaifcfojgbncceneicipolopapchl/reviews
Firefox: https://www.abine.com/dntdetail.php

Why use Adblock?
Without getting into any so called "moral" obligations you as a viewer of content have to support the content you like on the internet by simply viewing ads to help pay for things such as hosting, adverts can be very obtrusive, annoying and really a breach of privacy. Ads and websites often attempt to judge the content you view to better advertise to you. I don't want to be sold anything or have ads be pitched at me based on my browsing history, and you shouldn't either.

Adblock & Adblock Plus
Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adblock/gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom
Firefox: Not Available

Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adblock-plus/cfhdojbkjhnklbpkdaibdccddilifddb
Firefox: https://adblockplus.org/en/firefox

What is DNS? Why should I care what DNS server I am using?
DNS is one of the fundamental building blocks of the Internet.  It's used any time you visit a website, send an email, have an IM conversation or do anything else online. The "last mile" is the portion of your Internet connection between your computer and your ISP. DNSCrypt is a way of securing the "last mile" of DNS traffic and resolving an entire class of serious security concerns with the DNS protocol. DNSCrypt helps prevent MITM (Man in the Middle) attacks on your traffic.

DNSCrypt
https://www.opendns.com/technology/dnscrypt/

What is a VPN? Why should I use it?
A VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a network that you remotely connect to that uses tunneling protocols and end to end encryption thus encrypting 100% of your internet traffic of the computer you are connecting to the VPN. Using a VPN gives you the some of the highest security possible while browsing the internet. None of the traffic you recieve or send while connected to a VPN can be read by your ISP as it is fully encrypted from end to end. VPN's are also a good way to get around website blocks that your government may or may not put in place or copyright regions on YouTube. VPN's are also the best solution to free yourself from your government spying on what you are doing on the internet. There are two kinds of VPN's, paid VPN's (which are the best, especially ones that take anonymity seriously) and free VPN's. While using a free VPN, DO NOT download any copyrighted content assuming you are protected because you are using a VPN. Free VPN's will fully co-operate with authorities in tracking down who was downloading
what on their network if the copyright holders come to them for information on an IP address they found in a torrent swarm. However, paid VPN's (assuming you have the right one) take privacy and anonymity seriously are the best for all of your copyrighted material consumption. I am not encouraging you download copyrighted material, but if you so choose to do so using a paid VPN like the ones listed in this TorrentFreak article (http://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-providers-really-take-anonymity-seriously-111007/) is the most secure, private and evasive way to hide from prying eyes, even your ISP cannot see what content you are accessing. Below I have listed my favorite free VPN. It is very user friendly and
should be treated like a faster TOR. Do not do anything illegal while connected to a free VPN, this is for encrypting your generic internet usage.

Spotflux VPN
http://www.spotflux.com/

*Note to all YouTube streamers that encounter DoS/DDoS. Skype has an on going vulnerability in it that allows for the disclosure of IP addresses via viewing the targets VCard through the "Add Contact" form. The attacker does not need to add you nor talk to you, the attacker simply needs to look at your contact card on Skype to disclose your IP address. You can circumvent this through using a VPN to use Skype so that the IP disclosed is not your residential IP, rather the IP of the server of the VPN you are connected to.

What is TOR? Why should I use it?
Tor (short for The Onion Router) is a system intended to enable online anonymity. Tor client software directs internet traffic through a worldwide volunteer network of servers to conceal a user's location or usage from anyone conducting network surveillance or traffic analysis. Using Tor makes it more difficult to trace Internet activity, including "visits to Web sites, online posts, instant messages and other communication forms", back to the user and is intended to protect users' personal privacy, freedom, and ability to conduct confidential business by keeping their internet activities from being monitored. TOR is a shared network with many people and so the bandwidth is limited to the size and amount of people supporting the TOR network, but at this time the speed of the network is slower than you will be used to. TOR is a very useful tool for oppressed citizens of governments who are censored in everyday possible and is also useful for just doing small tasks on the internet you want to keep anonymous as well as getting around annoying website blocks.

TOR
https://www.torproject.org/

So now that you've secured and encrypted your internet traffic and now you want to make your online presence harder to find. Below I have written out some resources to digging up dirt on yourself so you can better secure and privatize your online profiles. There is no real secret to hiding your information
from searches on Google and numerous other sites. I suggest using the sites listed below to look up yourself and try to find any and all information on yourself and then change the privacy settings accordingly on the accounts that come up about you. Some good rules to follow to ensure a dichotomy of your online presence and your real life presence is to never use the same username/email for the same things. Also never post the same pictures on your online persona and your persona that directly interacts with your real life. It is very easy to reverse image search and find the same pictures linked to multiple accounts. Example: If you have the twitter handle of @twitter123 don't make your Facebook URL /twitter123. The same rule applies through out all social media, make it a habit to separate your online profiles from your social networking profiles that interact directly with your day to day life if you choose to have a social networking profile to do so. One more note, certain websites do not scrub EXIF data of photos you've taken that you upload to their website. A major one is Facebook; EXIF data is embedded information that is stored with your photos that you've taken which can tell you what the light levels were, what the shutter speed was as well as the GPS location of that photograph if taken with the GPS turned on in your phone. The iPhone especially likes to save this GPS geotagging information in photographs. It's a good idea to scrub all EXIF data from your photos for this reason, I suggest using a very nice software called XnView which I will link below, along with how to scrub the EXIF data from a photograph.

http://www.spokeo.com/
https://pipl.com/

http://www.xnview.com/
To remove EXIF data with your photo loaded, go to Edit > Metadata > Remove EXIF data

-Sage