Khaberni - In today's era of advanced technology and digital communications, protecting your online privacy has become crucial as it is among the most pressing technical issues in the digital age.
With the increasing reliance on the internet in various aspects of life, from online shopping to social networking, threats targeting personal data theft or spying on online activities have also increased. Therefore, you need to take steps to protect your digital privacy and ensure your sensitive data is not compromised.
To protect your privacy, it is necessary to follow a set of security and technical practices. Through the following article, we attempt to clarify how to protect your online privacy by providing you with facts, tools, and best practices so you can safeguard your privacy, data, and life.
What is Privacy?
Many people confuse the concepts of privacy, security, and anonymity.
Privacy
Privacy ensures that your data is only seen by the parties you want. For example, in the context of instant messaging, end-to-end encryption provides privacy by keeping your message visible only to you and the recipient.
Security
Security is the capability to trust the applications you are using, that involved parties are who they claim to be, and keeping these applications safe. For instance, in the context of web browsing, security can be provided through HTTPS certificates, which prove that you are directly communicating with the website you visit and prevent attackers over your network from reading or modifying the data sent to or from the website.
Anonymity
Anonymity, or the state of being unidentifiable, is the ability to act without a fixed identity being linked. Online, this can be achieved using Tor, which allows you to browse the internet with a random IP address and network connection instead of your own address. Using a pseudonym is a similar concept but lets you have a fixed identifier without linking it to your real identity.
What is the Importance of Privacy?
In the modern era based on exploiting digital data, your privacy is crucial, as it is related to human information, and this is important because information gives power over humans.
A large part of our modern society revolves around information. Whether shopping online, reading the news, searching for something, voting, looking for directions, or doing anything else, you rely on information.
If we live in an information society, our information is important, and therefore, privacy is important.
What is Privacy Protection?
Privacy protection refers to measures taken to protect your information from unauthorized access or use or theft and may include personal information such as name, address, phone number, social security number, financial information, as well as more sensitive information such as health records, passwords, and email accounts.
Privacy protection means your ability to determine all aspects of sharing your personal information with others.
With the increased use of the internet over the years, the importance of privacy protection has increased. Websites, applications, and social media platforms often need to collect and store personal data about users to provide services.
However, some applications and platforms may exceed user expectations in collecting and using data, leaving users with less privacy than they realized.
Furthermore, applications and platforms may not provide sufficient guarantees for the data they collect, which could lead to a data breach that jeopardizes user privacy.
What is the Importance of Privacy Protection?
In many countries, privacy protection is considered a fundamental human right, protected by law.
Privacy protection is important because personal data can be misused in several ways if not preserved or if individuals do not have the ability to control how their information is used:
- Criminals can use personal data to deceive users.
- Entities may sell personal data to advertisers or other third parties without user consent.
- Monitoring and tracking a person's activities can limit their ability to express themselves freely.
Many people and countries believe that privacy has intrinsic value as it is a fundamental right for a free society, like the right to freedom of speech.
