Featured: Privacy News Online – Week of December 11th, 2020 The US government admits to using the Patriot Act to collect web browsing information The Director of National Intelligence has admitted that the US government has used FISA courts to collect web browsing information. The Patriot Act is most well known for being used to … Continue reading “Privacy News Online | Weekly Review: December 11, 2020”
Featured: Privacy News Online – Week of August 14th, 2020 Chinese gamers will need to verify their real names on all games by September The Chinese government is rolling out a real name authentication and verification system to all online games in the country by the end of the month. Some of these verification systems … Continue reading “Privacy News Online | Weekly Review: August 14, 2020”
When you use the Internet, your data can be collected by the websites you visit, ISPs, governments, advertisers, intruders, and more. One of the easiest and most affordable ways to protect your data is to use Tor. But, what is Tor, what does Tor do, and who uses Tor? What is Tor? Tor, an acronym for … Continue reading “What is Tor? A Beginner’s Guide”
Tor and VPN – Two tools that will protect your online privacy. While they are used for the same purpose, they function in entirely different ways. Neither of them is “simply better.” The truth is that either one can be a good choice, depending on your requirements. Let’s see how each of them works. VPN … Continue reading “VPN vs. Tor: The Basics”
Ever got the creepy feeling that you’re being followed? You might not be entirely wrong. When you surf the internet, there are several entities that keep a track of your details, including your location. When you’re on the internet, you’re assigned an IP address. It looks something like this: 192.168.23.132 This magic number holds important … Continue reading “How to Hide Your Location – An Online Safety Guide”
In doing my research around the impact of TLS 1.3 for Private Internet Access, I came across some peculiar items in the new standards. TLS 1.3 represents a relatively large shift in cryptography, so much so that it was debated whether it should be called TLS 2.0 rather than 1.3. It throws away a lot … Continue reading “SuperCooKey – A SuperCookie Built Into TLS 1.2 and 1.3”
One of the biggest mistakes that people make while trying to operate privately on the internet is giving up their information over side-channels. That is, they break operational security through a misunderstanding of technology or by simply outing themselves behaviorally. This article is intended to give you a list of tips on how to keep … Continue reading “OpSec – Staying Private Under Surveillance”
A big question for those who consider internet privacy essential is how to best use Tor in combination with a VPN service provider like Private Internet Access. Should a Tor connection be tunneled inside an already established VPN connection, or should a VPN connection be tunneled inside an already established Tor connection? Before you can … Continue reading “How to Use Private Internet Access and Tor: Tor over VPN or VPN over Tor?”
Vietnam enforced a Facebook ban for a week last month. Censorship is a tool most often used by those that understand it least. Fighting against censorship forces one to come to grips with long and short term impacts of restricting free speech for perceived temporary gains. Reports on Twitter and other unblocked social media indicated … Continue reading “Vietnam’s Temporary Facebook Ban Forced Vietnamese to Use Privacy Software”