How to Protect your Data from Cybercriminals

Our lives have become digitized, and so have our data. And, our personal information has become widely available too.

The evolving technology has given birth to widespread cybercriminals – spies and hackers, who breach the data of users worldwide every day.

An efficient way to keep your data secure from any breaches is by using a VPN. You can find our guide to the best VPNs for this purpose on VPNRanks.

The information you subconsciously add on different sites over the internet becomes accessible to spies. Some of these are:

1. Personal Identifiable Information (PII): PII includes all details you’re identified with, like your name, DoB, location, email address, educational information, medical records, tax number, etc.
2. Cookies and browser plugins: Cookies and browser plugins track your browsing habits and search queries to use them for personalized advertisements. But is it just limited to that? We don’t think so.
3. Data collection through online shopping: Online shopping may look straightforward and quick. You add something to your cart and proceed to checkout by filling in your name, address, and credit card information.

Ways to secure your private data:

To curb data leaking and protect your private data, you must look into ways to safeguard it.

1. Using a VPN:

A VPN guarantees the protection of all personal data and eliminates the chances of any breach. A VPN disguises a user’s IP address, location and encrypts all data, search queries, and information from all cyberspies and hackers. VPNs also offer various security features to keep the network as secure as possible.

A VPN provides a zero log policy. This feature allows users to be confident that no logins will lead to any leaked data. They also offer a kill switch. This switch immediately disables a user’s internet access temporarily as soon as the connection drops, preventing all data from reaching the user’s ISP.

VPNs also use multilayer protection policies, smart DNS protection, split tunneling, and more.

A VPN doesn’t only keep you hidden from hackers, but it also keeps you anonymous from your Internet Service Provider (ISP) and the government, making it impossible to be tracked.

Which VPN to use?

We highly recommend ExpressVPN. You need to set this VPN up on your device, and it will provide you safe and secure browsing with the best connection speed. VPNs hide your IP address and let you surf the browser anonymously. It offers a kill switch, Smart DNS technology, the best encryption, and no users’ activity logs.

2. Two-factor Authentication:

Two-factor authentication (2FA) adds an extra layer of security wherever you log in or sign up with your email address and password. This is widely used on social media applications, emails, etc.

2FA uses the basic methods entirely to authenticate you and your data. For example, if you sign up to Whatsapp, it will send you a code on your number to check whether it belongs to you or not. This step is 2FA.

Similarly, many login-requiring websites ask for your phone number or an alternative email address to immediately inform you if they notice some unusual activity is taking place on your account.

3. Privacy-oriented search engines:

By private search engines, we do not mean using the incognito mode of your browsers.

There are specific encrypted search engines available on the internet that you can use to protect your data. While Google collects all your data and searches to sell it to third party advertisers for personalized ads, these privacy-oriented search engines keep you safe and block advertisers from reaching you. These search engines include DuckDuckGo, Search Encrypt, StartPage, Qwant, and Yippy.

4. Sensitive data encryption:

A user should encrypt his sensitive data in case his device is hacked at any time. There are various tools available for encryption. Some operating systems have encryption software like FileVault for Mac and Bitlocker for Windows. Both of these software can be connected to their hard drives to encrypt user data. Users can also transfer their sensitive data, store it in a USB drive and encrypt it.

5. Separate password for every site:

Password leak is the most common way of breaking into a user’s account to steal data or hack ID. We use our email addresses to log into our social media accounts and other connected websites. Having the same password to every site would allow hackers to enter a website after the other, hacking all our accounts and stealing all our data. To prevent this disastrous scenario, we must keep a separate password for every site.

In this way, if a cybercriminal does hack or enter into one of our accounts, then the next account would be saved by having a separate password.

You can also use a password manager to create a unique password for every account/site. Some of them include Keeper, Dashlane, 1Password, LastPass, and more.

Conclusion

In this technological era where cyber breaches have become extremely common, we must be vigilant and protect our data in every way. Use the above-listed methods to safeguard and secure all your private data from breaches.