{"id":12962,"date":"2021-12-28T13:42:41","date_gmt":"2021-12-28T12:42:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woocommerce-331985-2347979.cloudwaysapps.com\/12-essential-apps-for-ironclad-online-privacy\/"},"modified":"2022-01-18T16:20:39","modified_gmt":"2022-01-18T15:20:39","slug":"12-essential-apps-for-ironclad-online-privacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smartmileco.com\/12-essential-apps-for-ironclad-online-privacy\/","title":{"rendered":"12 Essential Apps for Ironclad Online Privacy","gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"text"}]},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n
As originally conceived, the internet supported anonymity. Your PC sent a page request to the server, the server returned the requested page, and the interaction was over. The only thing the server got was your IP Address (without which it couldn\u2019t send you that page). Today, your surfing is anything but anonymous. Each browser request comes with a ton of info about you and your PC. Trackers gather more data using cookies and fingerprinting techniques. Targeted ads are the most innocent result of this tracking; other effects are less benign, up to and including identity theft. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s nearly impossible to maintain total anonymity and still connect to the internet, but there are things you can do to limit your exposure, from connecting through a VPN to hiring a service that deletes your data from legitimate data aggregators. We\u2019ve collected products and services that take many different approaches to privacy protection. Check out our reviews, then choose one or even more to defend your privacy.<\/p>\n
Our Experts Have Tested 124<\/span> Products in the Security Category This Year<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Like the internet itself, email was invented by optimists and academics who never dreamed that anyone would misuse it. Read someone else's mail? How rude! Fill up inboxes with unwanted junk mail? They had no idea what was coming.<\/p>\n Encrypting your email is one obvious way to protect the privacy of your messages. It's a significant and effective technique, one that merits its own, separate roundup, The Best Email Encryption. See that article for a deeper dive into these snoop-fighters. Here's a brief summary.<\/p>\n Preveil, Private-Mail, ProtonMail, and StartMail let you lock down your communications using a technique called\u00a0public-key cryptography. All but Preveil use a protocol called PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) to generate a pair of keys, one public, one private. To send me a secure message, you encrypt it with my public key, and I decrypt it with my private key. Simple!\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Using Preveil is even simpler, though. A high-tech system involving what the company calls wrapped keys <\/em>means you never deal with a key, public or private. It does also mean you can't connect with users of other PGP-based services, but few consumers know how to set that up.<\/p>\n This public key technology also lets me send you a message that's digitally signed, guaranteeing it came from me, with no tampering. I simply encrypt the message with my private key. The fact that you can decrypt it using my public key means it's totally legit. ProtonMail and StartMail automate the key exchange process with other users of the same service, while Private-Mail requires that you perform the exchange yourself. With any of these, you can exchange secure messages with anybody who provides a public key.<\/p>\n Of course, not everyone has embraced public key cryptography for their email. With Tutanota, StartMail, and ProtonMail, you can send encrypted messages to non-users, though you don't get the same level of open-source security. The service encrypts the message using a simple password, and you transmit the password via some avenue other than email, perhaps a secure messaging app.<\/p>\n Virtru offers email encryption for free, but only if you use Gmail, and only in Chrome. Like Preveil, it handles key management internally, though it doesn't use public-key cryptography. You send an encrypted message, and the recipient clicks a button to read it\u2014without either of you entering a password. SecureMyEmail is likewise free if you use it to protect a single Gmail, Yahoo, or Microsoft account. ProtonMail offers a free tier, but with some limitations.<\/p>\n Given that these tools have their own roundup, we've removed them from this article's product lineup. <\/p>\n With the contents of your email conversations encrypted, no hacker can sniff out just what you're saying. However, your email address itself is exposed any time you send a message, buy a product online, or sign up for any kind of internet-based service. That might not sound problematic, but your email address is typically your user ID for many sites. A hacker who finds your email and guesses your weak password now owns the account. And, of course, having your email address floating promiscuously around the web just invites spam.<\/p>\n But how can you communicate without giving a merchant or service your email? The solution lies in a simple technology called a\u00a0Disposable Email Address, or DEA. The DEA service provides and manages these addresses, ensuring that mail sent to them lands in your inbox. Most such products let you reply in such a way that your replies seem to come from the DEA. Bulc Club is an exception, in that it doesn't permit replies. If you're done dealing with a particular merchant, or if one of your DEAs starts receiving spam, you just destroy it.<\/p>\n Burner Mail, Abine Blur, and ManyMe are among the services offering DEA management. ManyMe is unusual in a couple of ways. Like Bulc Club, it's free, which is uncommon. And unlike most such services it doesn't make you register a new FlyBy email (as it calls them) before using it. Say someone at a cocktail party asks for your email. You can make up a FlyBy address on the spot, without giving your actual email away. SimpleLogin also lets you make up DEAs on the fly.<\/p>\n Abine Blur takes the concept of masking your actual identity online to the next level. Besides masking your email address, it offers masked credit card numbers, different for each transaction. You load the masked card with exactly the amount of the transaction, so a sleazy merchant can't overcharge you or use the card again. It even lets you chat on the phone without giving your actual number.<\/p>\n It's worth noting that Private-Mail and StartMail also offer a modicum of DEA management. StartMail lets you manage up to 10 permanent DEAs, and an unlimited number of DEAs set to expire within two weeks or less. Private-Mail offers five alternate email identities, without full DEA management. Tutanota's email aliases are even more limited.<\/p>\n As they say, if you're not paying, then\u00a0you\u00a0are the product. You can surf the internet endlessly without paying a fee to visit specific sites, but those sites still work hard to monetize your visits. Advertising trackers plant cookies on your system, taking note when a tracker from an ad on a different website encounters that same cookie. Through this and other tracking methods, they form a profile of your online activity, a profile that others are willing to pay for.<\/p>\n Some years ago, the Internet's Powers That Be, recognizing that many users prefer not to be tracked, ginned up a simple Do Not Track message to be sent by the browser. This DNT system never became a standard, but all the top browsers adopted it anyway. It had no effect because websites were and are free to ignore the header.<\/p>\n In place of the ineffectual DNT header, many security companies started devising active systems to identify and block ad trackers and other trackers. You'll find this feature as a bonus in many\u00a0security suites and some privacy-specific products. Abine Blur and IDX Privacy offer active DNT. Unlike most such implementations, Midnight deters tracker requests in any internet-aware application.<\/p>\n The trackers, in turn, invented a different technique for identifying individuals across different websites, relying on the ridiculous amount of information supplied to each site by your browser. This ranges from your IP address and browser version down to minutiae like the fonts installed on your system. There's so much information that trackers can create a fingerprint that's almost sure to identify you, and only you.<\/p>\n So, what can you do? Make a liar out of your browser, that's what. Avast AntiTrack mixes up the data sent from your browser so it's different for each website. Important info still reaches the site, but not in a consistent way that could be fingerprinted. Norton AntiTrack does something similar, and, like Avast AntiTrack, it also thwarts traditional trackers.<\/p>\n Using a\u00a0Virtual Private Network, or VPN, disguises your IP address but leaves plenty of data unchanged for the fingerprinters. Even so, keeping your internet traffic encrypted and having your IP address hidden are valuable ways to protect your privacy. In addition to other privacy components, IDX Privacy includes VPN protection.<\/p>\n Passwords are terrible, but we don't yet have a universal replacement. For security, you must use a different non-guessable strong password for every secure site. The only way anybody can accomplish that feat is by relying on a\u00a0password manager. Unless you use a different strong password for every website, a data breach on one site could expose dozens of your other accounts.<\/p>\n In a perfect world, you already have an effective password manager in place, and you've taken the opportunity to fix any weak or duplicate passwords. On the chance you aren't already equipped, some privacy products have taken to including password management as a bonus feature. Abine Blur, for one, offers a complete, if basic, password manager. It even rates your passwords, giving extra credit for those logins that also use a masked email address. You may prefer separate installation of a top-notch free password manager. <\/p>\n IDX Privacy doesn't help you manage passwords in general, but it does offer a tool to identify passwords you shouldn't be using. Enter a password in its Password Detective tool to check if that password has been compromised. Spoiler: if it's a simple password it almost certainly has. Don't worry; IDX Privacy transmits a hash of the password for its database check, not the password itself.<\/p>\n The first sign that your privacy is in danger may be the appearance of your private data on the dark web. Hackers who breach online data troves are quick to put what they've found on the market. The free Safe Me mobile app scans the dark web and reports any exposures of your email address, along with breached passwords and other personal data. As you work through the report, updating compromised passwords, you raise your privacy score. Configuring your device's security properly also raises the score, as does working through dozens of short security awareness courses.<\/p>\n Where Safe Me specifically seeks data associated with your email address, IDX Privacy collects a variety of other personal information that it then seeks on the dark web. For each exposure, it offers advice on just what you can do to minimize bad effects on your security and privacy.<\/p>\n Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection also scans the seamy side of the web for your private information, but it goes deeper with its searching than IDX Privacy. It uses connections between found data to come up with data that might<\/em> relate to you. As you review these possible exposures and either verify or discard them, it fine-tunes its dark web search. <\/p>\n Just as your private data can be exposed in many ways, software companies find a variety of ways to protect it. One unusual service comes from Abine DeleteMe. Rather than create disposable email addresses, this service attempts to clean up your existing email and other personal data. It searches dozens of websites that legally aggregate public information. Wherever it finds you, it sends an opt-out request to remove your data. This process can't be fully automated, so DeleteMe is relatively expensive.<\/p>\n If a malefactor steals your laptop or otherwise gains access to your PC, your private data could still be safe\u2014if you've\u00a0encrypted\u00a0it. We've covered numerous products solely devoted to encrypting files, folders, or whole drives. Some privacy products broaden their protection by including encryption. <\/p>\n SafePic, a free iOS app from Norton Labs, aims to protect sensitive data found in images, things like pictures of receipts, passports, or other sensitive documents. It gathers up such images, puts them into encrypted storage, and replaces them with a blurred placeholder that only you can un-blur.<\/p>\n Private-Mail goes beyond the usual features of encrypted email by giving you an online area to store encrypted files. You can encrypt files using PGP or using a simple password, and you can even share your encrypted files with others. ProtonMail's ProtonDrive also lets you share encrypted files, though officially this feature is still in beta.<\/p>\n With Preveil, storing essential files in your encrypted cloud is a snap. You just treat that cloud like any other folder. Sharing with other Preveil users is also easy.\u00a0<\/p>\n Virtru doesn't offer cloud storage, but it gives you unusual control over your messages and attachments. You can set messages to expire, disable secure forwarding, and add a watermark to some kinds of attachments. You can also convert attachments into a protected form that only the recipient can view, just like a Virtru message.<\/p>\n In addition to all its identity and privacy protection features, IDX Privacy promises recovery if identity theft happens to you, including remuneration for associated costs. We've determined that we just can't test identity theft remediation, but it's nice to know that if a thief slips past the protective layers, you'll have help with recovery.<\/p>\n One unusual feature in Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection is detection of social media impersonators. This tool doesn't ask for your social logins or require you to install a special app. Rather, it scours dozens of social media sites looking for profiles that are either yours or pretending to be you. Once you claim your actual accounts, any that remain must be impersonators.<\/p>\n When you set up an encrypted email system or a disposable email address manager, your account password is a potential weakness. If you use an easily guessed password, or if a stranger shoulder-surfs your login, you could lose control of your privacy protection. That's where multi-factor authentication comes in.<\/p>\n The concept is simple. With multi-factor authentication, logging requires at least two of the following: something you know (such as a password); something you have (such as an authentication app); or something you are (such as a fingerprint). Quite a few of the privacy tools examined here offer a multi-factor option, specifically Abine Blur, Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection, Burner Mail, IDX Privacy, Private-Mail, SimpleLogin, StartMail, and Tutanota.<\/p>\n All these products work with Google Authenticator or another\u00a0Time-based One-Time Password\u00a0generator. To get started, you use your authenticator mobile app to snap a QR code provided by the privacy program. Enter the code generated by the app and you're done. Now, your password alone doesn't grant access to the privacy program. A password thief won't be able to enter the code from your authenticator app, and hence won't get in. SimpleLogin and Tutanota also support using a Yubikey or other\u00a0U2F (Universal 2nd Factor)\u00a0authentication key.<\/p>\n Preveil also provides a degree of multifactor authentication by the very nature of its encryption. Connecting to your encrypted mail is easy and automatic if you have access to both the email account and to a trusted device. An evildoer who cracks your email account still won't gain access to your encrypted mail and files. And if you lose a trusted device, you can cancel your trust.<\/p>\n As for Virtru, it doesn't require a password and doesn't offer multifactor authentication. You prove your identity by logging into your Gmail account. That being the case, you'd do well to\u00a0protect that Gmail account\u00a0using multi-factor authentication.<\/p>\n These aren't the only programs for protecting your privacy, and this isn't an exhaustive list of privacy-cloaking techniques. However, all these programs do their best to keep you safe from advertisers, spies, and creeps online.<\/p>\n
\nThe Email Nightmare, Part 1<\/h2>\n
\nThe Email Nightmare, Part 2<\/h2>\n
\nThrow the Trackers Off the Scent<\/h2>\n
\nNope, Passwords Aren't Going Anywhere<\/h2>\n
\nPublic Exposure<\/h2>\n
\nMany Other Modes<\/h2>\n
\nProtect the Protectors<\/h2>\n