How to Protect Your Online Privacy Data from ISPs
Although you’ve taken all the privacy precautions, you may not realize a fact that your Internet Service Provider (ISP) has the ability to see what you are doing online. The ISPs are not just allowed to track us, but they can also sell our information and make dollars out of it. In consideration of such security and privacy concerns, a burning issue of how to prevent your online privacy data from ISPs has started surfacing.
Watch Out! Your ISP May Track You Without Your Knowledge.
Did you know that Congress just passed a law that allows your Internet service provider (ISP) in US to sell your personal data? That is surely a creepy thing. Since you are on their network they basically have more information on you. That’s to say, ISPs technically know your address, phone numbers, emails, chat IDs, Skype IDs, banking information and everything else to know about you. With this information, they can sell your data to marketers without your knowledge and approval to earn extra money. In addition, ISPs has the ability to snoop through your traffic, record what you’re browsing, and then inject ads into your traffic based on your browsing history.
How Does Your ISP Track Your Online Privacy?
Every time you connect to the Internet, your Internet service provider assigns you a dynamic IP address and then ties it to your activities online. With the IP address, they can log your online data like every website you visited before, when and how long you stay on those sites.Technically these logs are anonymous, but since they are tied to your IP address, so they can figure out where you’ve been and who you’ve been talking to. It turns out that your IPS can keep an eye on you.
Best Way to Protect Your Online Privacy Data from ISPs
Use HTTPS when browsing online. Use of https in a URI scheme rather than http indicates that an encrypted connection is desired. So while your ISP can see which sites you are visiting, the data actually sent to or displayed from the web site on an https connection is encrypted. Using an https connection to a service like Gmail is one way to secure your email from snooping.
Use TOR Network. The Tor project is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving online privacy tools. Tor is an important tool for political dissidents and whistleblowers to anonymously share information, and you can just as easily use it to help protect your privacy. When you use the Tor Browser, your activity is encrypted and sent across a network of Tor servers, making it much harder to trace back to your computer.
Use a Virtual Private Network – VPN
Except the 2 ways we mentioned above, there is still a way we highly recommend users to use to secure themselves from ISP web history tracking – Use a VPN service provider. Many individuals are using VPNs for the security and privacy they provide. Some people use VPNs at Wi-Fi hotspots to prevent snoopers from collecting private information. Others use VPNs at home as a way to get around ISPs and service providers blocking certain websites,
VPN can mask your IP address which makes it difficult for ISPs or third-party advertisers to track you on the web. It provides an encrypted connection to your network and your browsing history over the VPN can not be seen by your ISP.
There are a number of VPN service providers in the market. Just choose a trustworthy one which can help provide a complete anonymity, secure and encrypted connection. ISP has a logging of your every move and keeping the logs up to 2 years. Therefore, selecting a VPN that doesn’t store logs of users’ online activity is necessary.
Recommended VPN Service Provider to Protect Your Data
Before you pay for a VPN service provider, you may need to figure out the follow questions:
- Will the VPN provider keep logs of your activity? If it will, how long will it keep?
- How many VPN servers do they own? How many different locations their servers cover?
- What encryption and security protocol do they offer?
- What’s the payment method if you need to sign up their service? Does it accept anonymous Bitcoin payment?
- What platform is available to use their VPN service? Can you use on android or iOS?
- How many concurrent connections are allowed?
There are many different VPN providers. While some free VPN providers can potentially keep logs of your browsing activity, defeating the purpose of using VPN for online anonymity, and it could open backdoor for malware. Therefore we suggest users choose a paid VPN instead.
We understand that selecting a VPN service can be a daunting task. Here are the best VPN providers you can use to prevent your ISP from tracking your online activity.
- EXPRESSVPN
- PureVPN
- NornVPN
- BULLETVPN
- HIDEMYASS
Those VPNs own servers in many of the countries around the world, and they provide members with the full anonymity and encryption. Protocols like OpenVPN (TCP, UDP), L2TP-IPsec, SSTP, and PPTP are offered to users. And the best thing is they claim that “zero logging of your network traffic”. If you are interested in the service, some of them may offer free trial, and money-back guarantee. Give a try and prevent your ISP from tracking you and throttling your connection.
Tips: If you have any problems about using VPN service, you can live chat with online experts for instant help.