The best online privacy tools for staying secure

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Long time followers of mine know I’m in to online privacy and internet freedom. It was a big challange 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.

From secure browsers, encrypted messengers and password managers, here’s how you stay secure online and offline during traveling.

TOR – my all time favorite for anonymous browsing

No, I’m not up for a single trip to Silk Road, but I’m all about staying secure myself. You might have read about the dangers of using a 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

FileVault – disk encryption

Horror, what if your laptop gets stolen while traveling? You’ll probably never see it again. So make sure that if that horrible thing happens, at least your disc’s are encrypted so the bad guy can’t read your personal stuff. Windows and OS X systems come with built-in software to encrypt your diks. Search on Windows for BitLocker and on Apple for FileVault.

Ghostery (anti-tracking tool)

Ghostery is a tracking tool that can be added to your browser to show you how you’re being tracked online — and by whom. Available for most modern browsers for desktop and mobile, its aim is to inform users of how many companies are tracking your activities, like what sites you visit, and which companies collect data on you in order to serve you adverts. It also (at the time of writing) blocks just shy of 1,980 trackers.

Visit: Ghostery

AdBlock Plus (ad-blocker)

As an ad-blocker, AdBlock Plus is not strictly a privacy-saving software. But by blocking ads, the browser plug-in can significantly reduce the number of tracking cookies that get installed on your computer. The software, available for most widely used modern browsers, is used by more than 50 million people. It’s also open-source, so other developers can inspect the code.

Visit: AdBlock Plus

Silent Circle (encrypted voice calls)

Silent Circle, which last year canceled its upcoming encrypted email service as to avoid being forced to hand over data to the government, invented Silent Phone. The encrypted voice calling serviceworks on existing cellular networks. It’s not free, but it’s low-cost and has been widely lauded by privacy experts alike.

The company also received more than $30 million in funding towards its Blackphone design, an all-inclusive mobile device that aims to be surveillance-proof.

Visit: Silent Circle

HTTPS Everywhere (secure-site switcher)

Created by the Tor Project and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), 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. This makes browsing more secure by encrypting everything from your computer to their server, and vice-versa.

The plug-in, designed for Chrome, Firefox, and Opera, is also available for Firefox for Android.

Visit: Electronic Frontier Foundation

DuckDuckGo (search engine)

Google’s business model revolves around serving ads against the user. The better the data, the better the ads. The better the ads, the more money it makes.

But not all search engines are like that. DuckDuckGo, which was recently added to Apple’s iOS 8 software, does not store your data or send your search terms to other sites. Every user gets the same results. It’s the first privacy-conscious search engine of our time.

Visit: DuckDuckGo

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Hi there! I'm Noni May!
I’ve been blogging for over 15 years and have been working in the communications & marketing field for over 10 years. I started out young once I knew what my passions were. I also studied in between working and have a BBA and I now work as a freelance content marketer and blogger. I used to live the digital nomad lifestyle for years while traveling as much as possible! I'm passionate about entrepreneurship, finance, health, traveling and all things homes, so that’s what you’ll most likely read about here. I'm helping you live a life you love, finally build or grow that business and navigate the world while traveling.

My blog is read by business owners, digital nomads, bloggers, aspiring entrepreneurs, personal finance junkies, and travelers. On the blog, I share my experiences as an online entrepreneur and full-time traveler, and I write about business, PR, marketing, lifestyle, and money, just have a look at the 1500+ posts in the archives!

I would love to see you back on the blog and feel free to reach out to me!