How to protect your privacy

There are lots of tools out there that say they will protect your privacy. However the real problem is some of those services or programs are already on the list of companies that PRISM is data mining . In case you missed it, PRISM is the name of the project that our Federal Government uses to spy on us.

If the things you share online are pictures, chatting with friends about normal family stuff then you might not be worried that  the Federal Government is spying on you.

The problem I see is  we should not have to be worried about the Federal government invading our privacy. After all what we write in our emails, the stuff we share online with our friends is supposed to be between those we are communicating with. What’s the point in privacy settings if anyone in the Government can see it?

Lets say you want to protect your privacy. The first step is to delete all of your social accounts. Does that sound harsh? Sure, I like Facebook and twitter but if I want to keep my thoughts to myself or just with friends or family its something I must do. Now I am not going to delete those accounts. While they are time wasters I knew from the beginning that the privacy settings would only protect me so much.

What bothers me the most about PRISM is that they can read my emails. I use Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo mail. With Gmail I also use  a paid domain for my emails. With my email, I assumed that my privacy was insured. As long as I changed my passwords and security questions frequently I figured my privacy was safe. Sadly that’s not the case.

The only real way to protect ourselves from privacy invasion is to stay off line. Is that something that we are really willing to do? I know I am not, since I get most of my information from online. I no longer watch TV since I refuse to support those networks that support one political party over another. Reporters are supposed to report the news, not make it up or slant it. However that’s for another article.

If you wish to have some type of privacy then you will need to pay for a VPN service. This will give you some protection on the files you share or download. To protect your privacy while searching for information you will need to find another search engine besides the popular ones. Google , Bing and Yahoo are out. There are other search engines out there that promise not to track your data. Encrypting your data on your hard drives , email and any other format you might store data on is another way to protect your privacy. Keep in mind that with enough computer power a hacker can crack just about anything.

The only real way for us to prevent or stop the invasion of our privacy is to force our elected officials to put a stop to PRISM as well as any other similar programs.

For those who think its ok for the government to invade our privacy in order to protect us, I ask what other rights are you willing to give up in the name of security?