When it comes to the internet, privacy has become an important topic of discussion lately. With user data and browsing history frequently being sold by major companies, many are looking for ways to still use the internet but maintain anonymity. There are many reasons why some may look for more privacy, but I think at its core privacy is a right for users and shouldn’t be something we need to actively seek out.

Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. Large platforms like Google and Facebook are the biggest offenders right now. Both sell user data to advertisers and can often cross the line by listening to conversations either through our phone or messaging users on their platforms. This is largely unsettling and a huge concern to me.

Protect Your Finances With Blockchain

Spending money is one thing we can look at to protect our privacy. We expect a certain level of anonymity and confidentiality when we spend our hard earned money. Although it is fairly secure when you use large services like Visa and Mastercard, there is potential for your information to be breached and taken by hackers that may have malicious intent. Digital cash is a great way to prevent this, but even coins like Bitcoin aren’t entirely anonymous.

Although Bitcoin’s security is pretty top notch and it’s nigh impossible to interfere with the network, there is no guarantee that your spending can’t be tracked to your personal information if a user is dedicated to finding any possible ties to your real world identity.

Monero looks to change this and offer a fully anonymous method of spending cryptocurrency. Although the transactions themselves are still publicly available, almost every aspect of it is obfuscated by hiding the addresses and other data of those involved. It was simply created to be a totally anonymous form of digital cash and can be used as such with many different vendors.

It has had its fair share of controversy, though, since the anonymous aspect tends to attract some unsavory uses. The force behind the 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack converted the bitcoin wallets associated with the attack to Monero to cover up their tracks. Alongside that, it was found that 44% of ransomware attacks that targeted cryptocurrency used Monero to hide their identities and make it impossible to trace who was behind it.

Although it has gotten a lot of bad publicity because of this, I think Monero still has more value to the average user. The internet has become a potentially dangerous platform to use, but it is a necessity at this point so I think methods of spending that can protect you are more important than ever. More information on how Monero works can be found on their website.

Monero isn’t the only privacy currency, there are a couple of others worth noting. Zcash, Dash are some of the more notable alternatives. There are plenty of others gaining traction and I think this particular sector of cryptocurrency can see a lot of growth in the future.

Maintain your privacy when searching for information

Google is by far the largest search engine. It’s easy to see why; it offers accurate and optimized search results that cater to you personally while maintaining a blazing fast speed. But as mentioned earlier, nearly everything you do on their platform is tracked. There a lot of alternatives to it, blockchain and otherwise.

DuckDuckGo

As concerns about privacy mounted, DuckDuckGo started gaining more traction. DuckDuckGo touts greater user privacy; It doesn’t track IP addresses or store any search histories, and it only uses cookies when absolutely necessary. It compiles its searches from a variety of different sources and often uses Wikipedia to show more information on the exact search query where possible.

The search quality of the platform has also improved significantly over time. It tries to prevent results from content mills so users can experience genuine and helpful results and in my experience has already surpassed Google in result quality.

Tailcat

Recently bought by Brave, this one deserves a mention. Brave has seen a lot of attention lately with the growth of their Basic Attention Token, which you can read my quick post about here and find more info on their website. Once it launches I expect it to be tied to the BAT platform and it will likely offer earning opportunities.

Set to be built on a completely independent index from other engines, it aims to offer the same privacy that DuckDuckGo currently does while decentralizing the entire process to keep large entities away from user information (of which it saves very little).

Presearch

Although clunkier than the current options, this blockchain alternative is worth taking a look at. You can earn their native token through the use of the engine, which is a nice incentive. Presearch will store some data, typically what you personally supply the platform, and then very little relating to your searches, but it won’t track your search queries or use third-party cookies.

Currently, the search results leave a little to be desired. Since most of my searching is pertaining to the cryptocurrency world, I’ve had some decent results. It ties to CoinGecko to provide coin info right on the results page which is nice for crypto searches. However, the more obscure your queries are, the less effective the results become compared to the other options. I hope it continues to grow and provide better results, but so far it is still far in its infancy.

Your emails should be private to everyone, especially the service you use

Again, Google is one of the titans here. Their email service, Gmail, is easily one of the most popular ones. This Cybernews article covers some of the basic concerns on the platform and offers something to think about. Luckily, there are a few services that offer better privacy and protection.

Protonmail

Founded in Switzerland, Protonmail is open source and offers client side encryption which protects data and emails before they even make it to their server. No data is saved unencrypted on their servers, which is very different from some of the more popular providers. Mail sent to another Protonmail user is automatically encrypted and emails sent to non-Protonmail accounts have the option of plain text or to be encrypted which can only be opened with a previously shared password.

Worth noting that if you need to reset your password, all emails on the account are automatically encrypted and unable to be read after the password reset.

Personally, this is the email service I currently use. I’ve been on it for about six months now and I haven’t found any downside yet so I highly recommend it.

Tutanota

Germany is the home of Tutanota, they offer similar encryption as Protonmail when used between Tutanota users. Emails sent outside of Tutanota require a previously exchanged password to view. Accounts that are inactive after 6 months are automatically deleted by the service. An encrypted calendar service is also offered by them.

Lavabit

Honorable mention goes to Lavabit. Although previously suspended due to ties to Edward Snowden, they’re another company focused on private email service. They received a lot of pressure from the US government because of those ties and shut down in an effort to protect their users from those forces. I think this says a good amount for what they’re willing to do to protect user data.

The internet is a crazy but wonderful place that requires being on your guard to protect your privacy and data. There are some of the easier ways you can go about protecting yourself and I see very little downside in using them.