Now that it has been two months since Trump was elected into office, we as Americans are starting to see how his decisions will affect our lives – including online.
With the use of Twitter by President Trump, you would think that he would be on the same page as us when it comes to the internet and online privacy. Well, you would be wrong. In fact, Donald Trump is not a supporter of the open internet or net neutrality. During his campaign, he suggested closing parts of the internet, saying that “We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what’s happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way. Somebody will say, ‘Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.’ These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people.”
Additionally, Trumps Attorney General, Jeff Sessions believes that even if you are using encryption online, government agencies should be able to monitor you and everything that you do on the internet. President Trump has no trust in such encryptions saying that no computer is safe.
The decisions that our new president can drastically affect our privacy online, and that can be scary to a lot of us. However, you don’t need to be completely helpless, there is a way for you to protect yourself from the government online, even if you don’t necessarily have anything to hide. By using Linux based operating systems, avoiding smartphones and fingerprint scanners, use disk encryption on your laptop, using source cloud services, disabling or covering up your webcam and mic, and using Signal instead of things like iMessage, FaceTime, or Skype for your messaging.
Although it does seem like in order to keep your privacy online you have to give up things that you use every day like your smartphone, it seems to be some of the only ways that are for sure going to keep your online information protected from the government.
It is important to add extra layers and barriers of privacy to your life online. We all are constantly using the web for every aspect of life, whether it be for work, school, or just to google who that one actor is from that one movie that you love. It is crucial to start thinking about what could happen with what we say and do on the internet because our privacy may not be so private for very much longer.
Have any more tips for how to stay safe online? Let us know what you think about these options listed above and if whether or not you would actually do any of them. Remember to stay safe out there!
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