When browsing online, it’s important that you don’t expose your information out to any and everyone. Because sometimes when you do your best to avoid exposing your information to everyone, it can still get out via viruses and harmful programs called malware.
There is some information about you that gets exposed everyday without you knowing about it. This information comes in the form of your IP address, your country, the type of operating system you have, the kind of internet browser you use, and even where you last visited online. People get this information about you when you visit certain websites where they track their user’s activities.
If this sound alarming to you, then you should know that this is standard procedure. Companies do it everyday without you knowing it, and now that you do know about it, you should do something about it.
There is something called a “proxy server” that will allow you to browse the web anonymously. Proxy servers cloaks your IP address and other information so that it is much harder for people to find out certain information about you. Proxy servers aren’t 100% guaranteed to stop the leakage of information, but it’s a good step in the right direction.
To get a proxy server, you can go online and buy one or get one for free. Sites such as guardster.com and shadowsurf.com allows for anonymous web browsing through their site for free. They both also allow you to type in a URL that no one can track, and they will cloak it for you. There are more types of free proxy servers online but these two are great and are ones that I use personally myself.
Once again, a proxy server won’t protect you 100%, but it’s a great way to stop amateurs from trying to steal your information online. In addition to proxy servers, there are additional steps you can take to protect yourself online.
One thing you can do is use an encrypted connection when browsing online. The Mozilla Firefox allows you to browse “privately”, thereby shielding from others the sites that you visit online.
You should clear out your cookies after each browsing session. If you’re using Internet Explorer, you can go to Tools, and then Internet Options, and then select the delete button and a range of options will appear to you. One of these options will be to delete cookies, and this is what you want to do.
Cookies are nothing but text files that hold information about the sites that you browse to. So for example, when you sign-in to check your email everyday, once you sign-in a cookie is created and it stores this information in a text file on your hard drive. You want to delete it so that hackers online can’t hack into your computer and find files such as these.
On top of this, you can adjust your browser to not display Javascript and Active-X content from showing on your computer. Doing so will hinder your browsing experience however, so you will want to consider the pros and cons of doing so before you take this action.
All of these tips will go a long way in keeping your computer system secure. I highly suggest you start using them today so that you can start browsing safer right now.