Someone's Watching You: 5 Tips To Stop Being Tracked Online

Surveillance by advertisers, government agencies, data brokers, cyber criminals, and even stalkers is the internet's biggest threat. As much as the original idea for tracking internet users was to provide a personalized experience legitimately, internet users now suffer unintended consequences.

Tracking has become a dreaded activity due to its potentially dire consequences. Among the top concerns are the invasion of privacy, safety, cybercrime, and intrusive advertisements. To secure your online tracks, we have five of the best tips that will free you from the worry of being monitored online.

1.        Virtual Private Network (VPN)

Your IP (Internet Protocol) address is the holy grail to trackers. Your location, online behavior, and personal identity are at risk of getting leaked if trackers get hold of your IP address. Hackers can use your IP address to track your ISP (Internet Service Provider) and physical location. By doing so, they can impersonate you, conduct a phishing attack, and manipulate your ISP to give sensitive personal information.

In this case, the key to combating tracking is encrypting your IP address; a VPN does just that. Internet traffic that is VPN-encrypted cannot be easily intercepted, which makes it difficult for third parties to monitor you. While at it, use trusted VPNs like ExpressVPN and NordVPN.

2.        Data Protection Protocols

Forget about hackers; even the most inexperienced internet user could effortlessly track your online strides with your password. For example, sharing your Facebook password with a stranger or friend may land you in big trouble. In that case, they can follow your tracks, know what sites you visit and who you communicate with, and acquire sensitive information about you. To protect yourself from tracking:

• Trust nobody with your passwords;
• Create strong, unpredictable passwords, not the vulnerable "1234";
• Regularly change your passwords;
• Use different passwords for different sites.

App Permissions

If you do not want your movements to be traced, do not give apps, especially the ones you do not trust, permission to access sensitive features like location, microphone, camera, storage, and contacts. Also, read and understand the terms of service before agreeing to any conditions.

App Settings

One of the most vulnerable ways of being monitored is through social media, and some settings may encourage it. For example, setting your Facebook status and profile audience to "Public" may expose you to strangers, probably some with ill intentions. Having your page set to "Friends" is better because it is only accessible to close acquaintances.

However, for apps that do not have such settings, you may be susceptible to receiving messages and calls from anyone. In that case, you can use Nuwber to confirm the identity of the texter or caller before engaging in any conversation. This minimizes the risk of phishing, intrusive communication, and illegal monitoring.

3.        Be Cautious With Public Wi-Fi

Surely, innocently browsing using your favorite coffee shop's Wi-Fi shouldn't be a cause of fuss, right? Well, only if you understood the potential repercussions! Public Wi-Fi is insecure, making it risky for your privacy.

For example, a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack is a rampant form of tracking that takes advantage of the unsecured nature of public Wi-Fi. In this attack, a cybercriminal illegally positions themselves between a user and a genuine website. Hence, any information you share with the main website, the cybercriminal intercepts and can use it—for example, stealing your credit card information.

In another scenario, you may be redirected from a genuine to a fake but identical website modified by hackers through DNS spoofing. Sensitive information will be tapped directly from the replica website and used maliciously.

How To Protect Yourself

While it is advisable to avoid using public Wi-Fi:

• Use a VPN to create a secure and encrypted connection between your device and the internet during desperate times.
• Choose only encrypted public Wi-Fi with a WPA2 or WPA3 wireless encryption protocol.
• Do not use it to do an activity that may jeopardize sensitive personal information like financial transactions and emails.
• Avoid leaving your Wi-Fi on with the "connect automatically" setting because you risk unintentionally connecting to a malicious Wi-Fi whenever you are out of your workstation or away from home.

4.         Private Browsing

Bad news: incognito browsing does not hide your internet tracks. It only prevents your browser from saving your browsing history but surely leaves data trails. It is no secret that search engines track their users' data. However, a secure search engine may just be what you are looking for if you want to stay anonymous and unmonitored. Little-known search engines like Qwant and StartPage do not share or store user data. They provide encrypted online connections that make it difficult for third parties to get information about their users.

5.        Cookie Management

Cookies are a key ingredient in online monitoring. Cookies are small data blocks that collect an internet user's data. When used well, cookies provide a seamless user experience, for example, helping users remember important information like their passwords and language preferences. However, cookies have been a major source of disquiet for internet users.

Intrusive Advertisements

You innocently search online for a decent phone, and suddenly your internet is full of ads about phones throughout the day. A little too pushy. Advertisers use cookies to help provide personalized ads. However, like in the example above, those ads can be intrusive. To understand the gravity of cookies concern, even Google bowed to the pressure and announced the phase-out of third-party cookies by 2024, a move dubbed the "cookie apocalypse". This will help prevent intrusive ads and unnecessary third-party behavioral tracking.

However, until then, the safest way to steer clear of intrusive ads is by regularly clearing your cookies.

Cookie Poisoning

Cybercriminals can tamper with genuine cookies by "poisoning" them with malicious data to bypass your internet security. This can have dire consequences, like data and identity theft. For this reason, always be careful and clear your cookies regularly to reduce the chances of cookie poisoning.

Conclusion

Online tracking can be a nuisance to internet users. The repercussions may range between annoying ads and full-blown cyber and even physical attacks. For example, authoritarian regimes have used online surveillance to curtail human rights. Therefore, you can be excused for thinking about your safety and choosing anonymity. In addition to the above tips, always enable the DNT (Do Not Track) setting available on most browsers. Although not 100 percent effective, DNT prevents sites from sending you cookies.