Re-Claim Your Online Privacy

Privacy is becoming a huge concern for everybody. So how do you re-claim your online privacy? Black people need to begin to look for a way to do this.  You have heard it before but I am going to say it again. There is no privacy on the Internet or anywhere for that matter. But there are ways African-Americans can begin to re-establish some privacy online.

If you use Google Chrome then you can use their Incognito function but whether that works or not is debatable.  Incognito works by preventing websites from tracking your movements online. Problem is there are other ways to track you on the Internet that Incognito simply can’t fix such as your IP address. For those of you who don’t know; an IP address is the address of your computer on the Internet.

Another way to web surf anonymously is to use the Tor browser. Tor has some sinister facets. Tor has become synonymous with what has become known as the “dark web“. Or places and activities that are certainly illegal. The Tor browser was originally developed for the defense department for the purpose of protecting government communications.  Now the browser is used every day for a wide variety of purposes by everyday people.

People use Tor to prevent websites from tracking them or family members online. Tor lets users publish web sites, surf the web and use other services without revealing who or where they are. People use Tor for socially sensitive communication such as chat rooms and web forums for rape and abuse survivors, or people with illnesses. So as you can see not everything on Tor is illegal.

Another tool for anonymous web surfing is the Disconnect Me browser extension. A browser extension is a computer program that extends the functionality of a web browser. In other words it lets your browser do things it was not originally programmed to do.

Disconnect Me claims to block over 2,000 websites from following you around the web. The browser is an open source program meaning developers can modify it to their liking. It is not free nor does it have a price. The website simply asks you to pay what you can. Disconnect Me allows you to see or block websites that invisibly track you.

I encourage black people to examine these tools. You need to re-claim your privacy. Its nobody’s business what websites you visit. Unfortunately there is a lot of information about you in the hands of merchants, marketers and data collectors. You can re-claim some but not all of it. But if you begin using these tools you can certainly limit how much information you broadcast and as the years go by you may even become semi-invisible in a lot data bases. So if you are interested in re-claiming your privacy you have some pretty good tools to help you do so. Now you know.