More
than half of Americans are worried about the U.S. government’s digital
spies prying into their emails, texts, search requests and other online
information, but few are trying to thwart the surveillance.
That’s
according to a new survey from Pew Research Center, released Monday. A
main reason for the inertia? Pew researchers found that a majority of
those surveyed don’t know about online shields that could help boost
privacy or believe it would be too difficult to avoid the government’s
espionage.
The
poll questioned 475 adults from Nov. 26 to Jan. 3 — about a
year-and-a-half after confidential documents leaked by former National
Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed the U.S. government
has been monitoring a broad range of online communications for years as
part of its efforts to diffuse terrorist threats.
“It
all boils down to people sort of feeling like they have lost control
over their data and their personal information,” Mary Madden, a senior
researcher for Pew, told The Associated Press. “But at the same time,
when we asked them if they would like to do more, folks expressed that
as an aspirational goal.”
Here are five steps you can take to be more private online.
STEALTHY SEARCHING
Don’t
want a digital dossier of your personal interests to be stored and
analyzed? Wean yourself from the most popular search engines — Google,
Bing and Yahoo. All of them collect and dissect your queries to learn
what kinds of products and services might appeal to you so they can sell
advertising targeted to your interests. Just because that trove of data
is meant to be used for commercial purposes doesn’t mean snoopers such
as the NSA couldn’t vacuum up the information, too, to find out more
about you.
A
small search engine called DuckDuckGo has been gaining more fans with
its pledge to never collect personal information or track people
entering queries on its site. Just 10 percent of those participating in
Pew’s survey said they use a search engine that doesn’t track their
searching history.
SCRAMBLE YOUR EMAIL
Encryption
programs such as Pretty Good Privacy, or PGP, can make your email
appear indecipherable to anyone without the digital key to translate the
gibberish. This can help prevent highly sensitive financial and
business information from getting swept up by hackers, as well as a
government dragnet. Yet only 2 percent of the people surveyed by Pew
used PGP or other email encryption programs. Part of the problem:
Encryption isn’t easy to use, as email recipients also need to use
encryption or leave their regular inboxes to read messages.
CLOAK YOUR BROWSER
A
privacy tool called Blur, made by Abine, enables its users to surf the
Web without their activities being tracked. It also masks passwords and
credit card information entered on computers and mobile devices so they
can’t be lifted from the databases of the websites that collect them.
Blur charges $39 annually for this level of protection. Privacy Badger
from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, offers a
free way to block tracking of browsing activity.
Only 5 percent of the Pew respondents used these kinds of tools.
CUT OUT THE INTERNET
It
might sound old-school, but if you want to share something really
sensitive, meet face to face. The Pew poll found 14 percent of
respondents are choosing to speak in person more frequently rather than
text, email or talk on the phone because of the Snowden revelations.
GET SMARTER
If
you’re looking to become more literate about the ins and outs of
digital privacy, two of the most comprehensive guides can be found
through the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Surveillance Self-Defense
site, https://ssd.eff.org/en , and https://prism-break.org/en/ .
Posted by : Gizmeon
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