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Long time followers of mine know I’m in to online privacy and internet freedom. It was a big challenge for me to figure out how to stay secure while traveling. You’re using someone else’s wifi all the time, there are different internet laws in every country you visit and what if your mobile phone or laptop gets stolen? I collected my favorite tips to stay secure at all times. And yep, unfortunately my iPhone got stolen on the road! But thanks to my preparations I didn’t lose any photos! From secure browsers, encrypted messengers, and password managers, here’s how you stay secure online and offline during traveling.
No, I’m not up for a single trip to Silk Road-a-like websites, but I’m all about staying secure myself. You might have read about the dangers of using an open wifi, if not, please do. Browsing with TOR keeps you a little bit safer than using the good ol’ Chrome for example, so why not? With TOR you browse the internet without leaving your activity open for prying eyes. Tor’s network of bouncing your traffic through multiple relays makes it nearly impossible to track a user’s identity or activity. You can access almost every website anonymously. Yes! No more hacks or spies! Download for free Tor Project.
Next in this list should definitely be a VPN, a tool to ‘hide’ your real IP address. Make sure you get a paid version of a VPN to stay safe, as free version slow your computer down and often tend to sell your information/details. I recommend ZenMate as it’s very user-friendly for people who don’t know anything about VPN’s!
The HTTPS Everywhere plug-in aims to force your browser into loading the secure version of a site over a page that doesn’t contain a security certificate. In normal people language? The plug-in makes browsing more secure by encrypting everything from your computer to their server. The plugin is designed for Chrome, Firefox, Opera and is also available for Firefox for Android. Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Ghostery is a tracking tool that can be added to your browser to show you how you’re being tracked online — and by whom. Scary? A little, but at least you know. Ghostery.