Why ever would someone think they needed a guide on Sure Fire Methods to Secure your Browsing in a Prepper or Survivalist blog? I am going to be honest here, I debated posting this guide because I wasn’t sure if it would be relevant to our readers. After all, is it even possible in today’s world to secure your browsing these days, do we even need it… it’s not like we’re doing anything illegal, right?
Sure Fire Methods to Secure your Browsing
I like the argument that people use, “If you’re not doing anything illegal, then it shouldn’t matter if Law Enforcement Officers (LEOs) see what you are doing“. Here’s the thing, about that argument… it doesn’t prevent people from seeing my browsing history who aren’t LEOs, nor does it stop LEOs from using circumstantial evidence to pin a crime on me – that I haven’t done. For the safety of everyone who uses my (or your) computer, I like to attempt to keep all my browsing clear from spying eyes. There may even be things which I don’t want other people to know that I have purchased.
In any case, let me start discussing some of the methods which I use to secure my browsing. I use a Virtual Private Network (VPN), at ALL times. A VPN essentially uses a fast proxy to scramble my data from all prying eyes. It doesn’t matter if I am on my computer, tablet, nor phone – my Internet Service Provider (ISP) cannot see what I am looking at nor doing. This is helpful as leadership has rolled back net-neutrality, which essentially had made it to where ISPs couldn’t slow down our traffic when streaming media, unless those streaming sites paid a little money to the ISPs.
Net-Neutrality and Netflix
Net-Neutrality became famous as ISPs were slowing down traffic to Netflix. We know that they were doing it to Netflix, because people began using VPNs to hide what they were doing from ISPs. So, a VPN simply hides data from an ISP. The data itself is usually encrypted – but some companies figured out they could watch the data before and after the tunnel, to see what a user was accessing. Our NSA is aware of that method of spying.
Since Net-Neutrality has been rolled back (in the USA), this means that once again users might have trouble accessing streaming media websites, unless those websites grease the palm of ISPs. But again, we can secure your browsing so that ISPs are unable to see which sites you are accessing.
#1 VPN Recommendations
When it comes to VPN recommendations when you secure your browsing, there’s really only a few which I can actually recommend. It all comes down to whether or not the VPN keeps logs of your data or not. If they don’t say (and sometimes when they claim they don’t), then that can mean that the data is secure from your ISP, but not from LEOs. To keep all the data clean, even from LEOs, then we also need to look at which methods are available to pay.
When in doubt, ask these questions: Can I pay with a money order, without providing my identification card (ID)? Can I pay with cryptocurrency (this isn’t as anonymous as it used to be)? Is it possible that I have a dynamic (random on login) Internet Protocol (IP) address?
Note: To keep everything hidden, a dynamic IP address is recommended. If you are playing a game with an anti-cheat software, you will want a Static IP address (doesn’t change). Otherwise, logging in via different IP addresses can set off the anti-cheat software, as perhaps your account is being logged in to via a 3rd party.
There are only a few actual VPNs that I can think of, off the top of my head, which I trust in this way.
Private Internet Access (PIA). They keep absolutely no logs, so if any LEO wants to browse your data, they have to know you are on, and browse it in real-time. However, requests often take more than a few hours to actually get signed off, to browse your current data. Also, fun-fact your data cannot be subpoenaed at a later date, as there’s no record.
NymVPN. Nym is a bit different from most other VPNs. They use a different protocol to allow you to use your VPN than others. Primarily, they add data (noise) to your data (and filter it back out), to make it harder for anyone to read what you do, while connected to your VPN. They claim they don’t log, and that the claim is unneeded – but there’s no way to test that, without purposely doing something illegal, to see if you get caught.
The Onion Router (TOR). TOR is unique in that it routes your data via many different nodes which are given voluntarily for people to hide not only their data, but also their origin IP. While TOR websites have mostly been found and TOR is slow. TOR is often good enough to send messages through it and to browse websites without images.
GetFlix is my final choice to VPN’s I personally trust. I trust it so much, that I purchased lifetime access several years ago. If I were going to stream (or torrent) files, this would be the choice I would choose, as I can localize where my data comes out – meaning my IP address will show up as coming from Greece, Germany, or one of many other countries. Truly one of the best ways to secure your browsing. I would NOT use this one for gaming, as there’s no static IP available.
There might be other VPNs which provide no logging and better encryption methods, yet I don’t know them off-hand. Maybe someone can provide the names of some of them in the comment section below. Do remember, though, that just because a VPN claims they do no logging, doesn’t mean it is necessarily true.
#2 Chatting with friends and family
When it comes to chatting over the internet, there are currently 4 private chat apps which I know about. These are all important when your want to secure your browsing AND chatting. But again, they are not all provided equal. For example, while Whatsapp claims to be end-to-end encrypted, they DO interact and provide information to LEOs on the fly. This might only be the metadata, which means who we are connected to, for how long, and anything which can be gleaned from that data… but I really don’t trust META.
META has long done everything they can to lie, cheat, and steal – when they didn’t think they would get caught. A great example of this, is it has been proven that they pirated terabytes worth of books to train their AI. They claimed they didn’t, but lied about it to avoid lawsuits. If they are going to lie about that, then who is to say they won’t lie about logging and accessing chat logs?
Telegram
Telegram is one of my all-time favorite chat apps, because we know that they do NOT share data with LEOs. In fact, you might have heard that the guy who wrote it, is Russian (OooOoo Scary). That’s automatically bad, right? When the data wasn’t released to Russia’s FSB (like the FBI/MI6). Russia first shut down access to data servers where the data was hosted (which took down way too many websites for comfort), and then the author fled to Saudi Arabia.
He is now jailed after he refused to give access to the EU government as well. Going to jail to protect my data? I am a firm supporter of Telegram and try to promote it – and the true story, not the one told by the EU and USA news and government.
Signal
Signal is another private encrypted chat. They claim to have no access to chat logs, as everything is also encrypted. As far as we can see form their website, they provide absolutely no information to LEOs. However, for those of us who are a bit worried nevertheless, there’s a fork (a project which has deviated from the original), called Molly. So yes, if you know my information on Signal, I can be found on Signal, however my data takes an additional measure of privacy with this other software fork. Note, that Molly is only for Android.
The one thing which bothers me about Signal, is because when the USA telecom system was infiltrated by hackers, we were told to use WhatsApp or Signal (not Telegram or SimpleX). It makes me feel like Signal provides some information to LEOs or the NSA found a way into it (or maybe I am just paranoid). Note that because it was likely that hackers were able to see Apple to Apple and to Android chats, secure chatting wasn’t actually secure.
SimpleX
The final chat method is also end-to-end encrypted. It’s an app called SimpleX. SimpleX is unique in that in order to create a chat, you have to invite another person. There’s no way for a user to contact you, unless you share your credentials publicly. The chat itself is limited in size for each block sent, and they cannot be intercepted and decrypted. No data is served unencrypted, not even files. When I want to initiate a chat, I send a link to someone via a URL or QR code. Without either of these, chat’s are not able to connect, so anyone attempting to spy on a user is unable to.
#3 The Best Browser
When it comes to choosing a web browser to use to secure your browsing, really the only thing you should ever consider is Firefox. Firefox is completely Open Source, which means bugs get fixed promptly. About 2 years ago, almost all the browsers on Windows, had a data leak. Firefox was the only one which was safe to use. Why? Because most others are based on Chromium, which is essentially the Google Chrome engine. For years, I had used Opera – because of a few select add-ons which were great for writing on my past websites. Suddenly, secure your browsing became synonymous with using Firefox.
ProTip: When you are using Firefox to secure your browsing, you should also use AdNauseum ad blocker. It’s the only ad blocker, which supports websites, by clicking on ads in the background. This then allows the websites to still generate income off of your browsing.
