How can you protect your personal information and browsing history from ISPs?
One word – ENCRYPTION! Do you know what encryption is? This is your best bet to protect your browsing history from your ISP. There are various services on the internet that let you encrypt your data and internet traffic so unauthorized people and organizations cannot trace or track your browsing history or link it back to your IP address. There are three primary ways to encrypt your data, so you can have the best online protection coupled with anonymity: VPN services, Tor & HTTPS. While not a perfect solution, it helps to cloud the vision of anyone watching, making their job harder. Electronic Frontier Foundation Senior Staff Technologist Jeremy Gillula explains that “Your ISP can see that you’re using a VPN or Tor but that’s all they’ll see.”
A VPN might be a more secure option since it encrypts your data – Tor doesn’t – and you don’t need to worry about the person operating the exit node – which is the exact case in Tor. On the flip side, each VPN is operated by a single provider while Tor is a distributed network that tries to preserve anonymity by routing traffic through a series of relays. Another issue is that VPNs are unregulated and could theoretically sell that data off the same way. So, while choosing a VPN you have to make sure that the service you are trusting with your data is not be based in any of the 14 eyes countries, especially the US, because VPN providers based in the US could be pressured to share or hand over users’ data to ISPs or government agencies.
It is worth considering looking at providers like PureVPN who are based in countries like Hong Kong or Ivacy VPN which is a Singapore-based VPN provider and has a no-log policy. Switzerland is another good option due to their privacy laws.
Talking about the last method mentioned above; HTTPS Everywhere browser extension provides users a secure connection to a particular website, which lets you know whether your connection to a particular web site is encrypted or not. Your ISP can’t see what you do on an HTTPS-enabled website. Your ISP knows when you visit https://google.com, but it doesn’t know what you searched on Google if HTTPS is enabled.