Protect internet privacy and see what the web knows about us

It is fun to search for your name on Google and see what comes out, but it can also be worrying if you think that what is found can be seen by everyone, friends and non-friends, without differentiation. Without going into a debate about how difficult it is difficult to find that " oblivion on the web " that many politicians would like to obtain to hide past wrongdoings, let's see here how we can protect our privacy on the internet, seeing first what the web knows about us .
Given the assumption that the Internet never forgets and has a great long-term memory, to protect your privacy you don't have to fight against authorities like Google or other famous websites trying to get them to delete information, news or photos that concern us, but to guide the results to make what you want appear, putting in the background what you don't want to see.

What does the web know about me "> Google tools for searching the internet.
However, one should not stop only at Google because one's name could also appear in other websites whose existence is perhaps unknown. There are also cases of homonymy, with results, looking for one's name, that speak of criminals or convicted.
In another article, people 's search engines are listed to find info and photos of friends looking for the name, including public information of the social networks to which they are subscribed.

How can search results be influenced or optimized?

It is not easy to influence search results, especially if you have an uncommon name. The trick is to create web pages titled with your name and the easiest way to do it is to subscribe to as many social networks as possible .
In particular, it is important to create a new searchable Facebook profile on Google that does not contain personal information, a Twitter profile (see how Twitter is used), a very serious profile on Linkedin (see the guide to the social network of LinkedIn work) and others.
The goal is to replace bad results with good and new ones created by us.
A website that can help bury bad results is BrandYourself, although in English, it gives an idea of ​​what to do by checking the results for your name.
These are just some of the tricks to protect our online reputation

Can unwanted results be canceled?

Removing unwanted search results, as mentioned above, is very difficult and in many cases impossible. The only thing you can do is contact the owners of the site and ask them to delete any information that concerns us, or ask Google to delete a result from searches by filling out a removal request (very difficult for Google to accept).
In another article we also saw how to unsubscribe from the internet and delete social network accounts, games and other sites

Why does the web know so many things about a person?

In most cases, it is the user himself who publishes personal information on the internet by authorizing the sites visited to make them public or use them for statistical or advertising data. Furthermore, as seen in a previous article, the web knows all about the browsing habits of each person who opens the internet browser.
READ: What are internet cookies? are they dangerous to privacy?
Internet giants, like Facebook and Google, collect and store huge amounts of user data.
Regarding the first, there are the privacy settings to control what is seen of us on Facebook .
For the second, Google provides an Activity Dashboard which summarizes all data stored by a registered user, including search history data.
READ ALSO: How does Google see us and what does it know about us?
Regarding the searches made on the internet, if you want to maintain privacy, you must therefore use the Google account privacy control options or try using another search engine that protects privacy such as DuckDuckgo.

What works to protect online privacy

The answer is to cover the connection with a VPN ( Virtual Private Network ).
We have seen what it means and what are the free programs to surf connected to a VPN and also the safest premium VPNs. The VPN routes the connection through an external server in an encrypted way, preventing any possible intrusion. One can imagine the VPN as a tunnel or a tunnel that covers the road to reach a point, that is, the website.
READ ALSO: How VPN, Proxy and DNS work
Among the VPN programs that are available for free we can, for example, recommend Opera VPN, included in the Opera browser and very easy to activate when you want to be well covered.
The best automatic tool to protect privacy on the Internet in normal surfing without VP, with Chrome or Firefox, is Privacy Badget . It allows you to prevent websites and especially Google and Facebook from tracking our browsing and knowing what we are doing on the internet.

Conclusions: Using the internet with privacy in mind

As written at other times, especially on the guide to online security, you cannot think of using the web without sacrificing a minimum of privacy.
As seen, there are several tools for not being tracked online by sites by blocking the collection of personal data and it is also important to configure the browser using the options for the protection of online privacy.
Keep in mind that it doesn't take much privacy to delete your browser history, use incognito browsing and not even block ads with Adblock.
In other articles the guides are clear for:
- Privacy options in Chrome
- Firefox options for privacy and internet security
- Security and privacy options on Internet Explorer.
- Control the privacy of your Google account, searches and personal data
If, on the other hand, if the only way to prevent sites from collecting data is by not surfing the internet, how can hackers operate without getting caught?
I have already answered this question in another article on the TOR project which guarantees complete online privacy .
Privacy is a luxury and can easily be violated on the internet. The important thing is to navigate with prudence and common sense, protect your computer from viruses and not fall into traps or organized scams to steal data or money from the most naive and less capable.
But I want to say that you should never take for granted that you are safe and always be careful to keep your personal data with jealousy and to check your name every now and then in the search results (With Google Alert you can receive a notice if you are mentioned online).