Anonymity on the web is not automatic.
In order to truly not be tracked, you must take several measures to secure yourself on the web, first and foremost by utilizing a VPN, or Virtual Private Network.
You may have heard of the recent, breaking political story ‘Lone DNC Hacker’ Guccifer being exposed as a Russian Intelligence Agent due to a mishap with his VPN, namely, because it did not have a kill-switch feature which will disconnect your internet connection when it is no longer active.
(Business Insider also reports this story here.)
…Guccifer failed to activate the VPN client before logging on. As a result, he left a real, Moscow-based Internet Protocol address in the server logs of an American social media company, according to a source familiar with the government’s Guccifer investigation. Twitter and WordPress were Guccifer 2.0’s favored outlets. Neither company would comment for this story, and Guccifer did not respond to a direct message on Twitter.
Working off the IP address, U.S. investigators identified Guccifer 2.0 as a particular GRU officer working out of the agency’s headquarters on Grizodubovoy Street in Moscow.
Many VPN services do not have this feature, and it’s best to know which do and only consider those as viable for your security and privacy online. One great option for VPN service is PIA, as they also do not keep logs and provide a kill-switch option.
Why use a VPN at all, you might ask? If you don’t, just about anyone with any semblance of computer skill can identify your utilizing your IP address online, which is akin to a digital version of your SSN.
Have you ever seen a police movie where the suspect doesn’t answer the officer’s question, they whisper something to their lawyer, and the lawyer answers the question? A VPN is to the internet what that lawyer is to the suspect. The added step is that the suspect is behind a veil and the cop would directly respond to the lawyer, who would whisper back to the suspect.
What it does is encrypts everything you send out to the internet and funnels it to the VPN’s “central station.” The station then decrypts what you sent them and sends it out to your target. When the target replies, they are replying to the VPN central station. The VPN then encrypt it and funnels it to you.
It’s letting you communicate with the internet without anyone being able to know that you’re the one who did it.
On a larger note, this revelation is a larger exposure of a new type of geopolitical espionage and warfare taking place in the world, which requires a keen understanding of technology itself to understand precisely how it works. Not only can you hide who you are with a VPN, but you can appear to be somebody else entirely — and from any state or country on the planet.
So now is the time to sharpen up knowledge of computing and information technology if you’d like to remain informed in the current geopolitical climate, as well as protecting yourself in an increasingly digital existence.
Misinformation and subterfuge is at an all time high, and climbing. Let’s get ahead of it before it gets ahead of humanity any further.
Next time we will take a look at Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. What they are, and why they are important.