10 tips to improve your Internet privacy

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Massive data breaches, marketers tracking your every step online, shady people exploring the photos you shared in social networks — the list of digital annoyances goes on and on. However, it’s not completely hopeless: You do have control over your data. Here’s how to improve your privacy online.

1. Check social privacy settings

If you have social accounts, those networks have a lot of information about you, and you might be surprised how much of it is visible to anybody on the Internet by default. That’s why we strongly recommend you check your privacy settings: It’s up to you to decide what info you want to share with complete strangers versus your friends — or even nobody but you.

Change your social network account privacy settings. Here’s how to do it in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat and VK.com.

2. Don’t use public storages for private information

Oversharing is not limited to social networks. Don’t use online services that are meant for sharing information to store your private data. For example, Google Docs isn’t an ideal place to store a list of passwords, and Dropbox is not the best venue for your passport scans unless they are kept in an encrypted archive.

Don’t use services meant for sharing to store your private data.

3. Evade tracking

When you visit a website, your browser discloses a bunch of stuff about you and your surfing history. Marketers use that information to profile you and target you with ads. Incognito mode can’t really prevent such tracking; you need to use special tools.

* Use Private Browsing in Kaspersky Internet Security to avoid Internet tracking.
* Learn more about tools that can protect you from web tracking

4. Keep your main e-mail address and phone number private

Your reward for sharing your e-mail address and phone number? Tons of spam in your e-mail inbox and hundreds of robocalls on your phone. Even if you can’t avoid sharing this info with Internet services and online stores, don’t share it with random people on social networks. And consider creating a separate, disposable e-mail address and, if possible, a separate phone number for these cases.

* Create an additional e-mail account and purchase an additional SIM card to use for online shopping and other situations that require sharing your data with strangers.

5. Use messaging apps with end-to-end encryption

Most modern messaging apps use encryption, but in many cases it’s what they call encryption in transit — messages are decrypted on the provider’s side and stored on its servers. What if someone hacks those servers? Don’t take that risk — chose end-to-end encryption — that way, even the messaging service provider can’t see your conversations.

* Use a messaging app with end-to-end encryption — for example, WhatsApp;
* Note that by default, Facebook Messenger, Telegram and Google Allo do not use end-to-end encryption. To enable it, manually start a secret chat.

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