How to protect your privacy

You are extremely reclusive, perhaps most likely an introvert, that shuns any sort of spotlight and publicity on your persona. You are the opposite of a celebrity. Yet, you have a lot to say, and you want to shout it behind a mask.

You are not a criminal, otherwise, you’d likely not get an online profile to use for criminal activity. I’m always amused by people stating that if you have nothing to hide, then there is nothing to fear from giving up your privacy. The argument such people make goes further to say that if you are indeed protective of your privacy, then surely you are involved in something illegal.

It always makes me question whether such people are naive, or themselves are likely hiding something, and making such statements gives them some sort of comfort that they would not be found out.

I grew up in a repressive communist country, and I have witnessed the negative effects of not having the ability to maintain your anonymity. The government of that country spent a huge amount or resources instituting a culture of neighbors spying on other neighbors, cousins spying on their relatives, brothers spying on their own siblings, and parents spying on their children and vice versa.

It got so ridiculous, that every single person had a folder created by the secret service and the police, with every detail about where they lived, who they associated with, what they did on a typical day, what was their “disposition” towards the illustrious leader, etc. You could not express yourself freely, because there was no way to maintain anonymity, and you could risk severe consequences if your said something that did not sound right to some avid communist in the crowd.

The point is, keeping your anonymity is something that should not be discouraged, but rather encouraged and protected. So, to help readers with the way in which you can achieve it, I’ll share what I’ve learned in keeping anonymous.

Your internet identity consists of three items, an email address, a phone number, and a domain name if you have one. Most of what you do online will require an email address, sometimes a phone number, and if you want to have a wider presence, your website domain name. The good news is that there are ways in which you could restrict the amount of personal information someone with nefarious intents can get about you online.

If you searched for “anonymous email” on Google, you’ll find a listing of various offerings, some with more merits than others. After I used a few of them, I ended up with https://www.guerrillamail.com/ and kept using it for a while until I found https://protonmail.com/. This is a service that does not ask you for your personal information when you sign up, and all content is encrypted on the browser, so it’s impossible for the service to provide your email content in the clear to a third party. You can sign up for free, or you can subscribe to one of the more advanced paid offerings. This service is based out of Switzerland and they follow the Swiss privacy laws. I’ve been using it for a while and I’m very happy with it.

If you searched for “anonymous phone” on Google, you’ll find a bunch of links to various ways in which you can achieve such. If you’re not concerned with Google knowing your mobile number, and you do not want others on the internet to know it, but you do want to use a phone number for people to call, you can use Google Voice. Sign up for a virtual phone number there, and Google would forward the calls to one or more mobile phones behind the scenes, without the caller knowing.

Lastly, if you have a wider presence on the web with your own website domain name, make sure that the company hosting your domain provides Domain Privacy Protection, where they use some proxy contact and address for the WHOIS lookup, rather than your own personal name and contact information. It is still your obligation to provide accurate information to the hosting company as the owner of the domain, but you do not have to provide the same information to the public reaching your domain.

Are you using such methods to increase your anonymity on the web? What other methods are you using?