Protect your online privacy by taking these steps

Congress has sent President Donald Trump legislation ending internet privacy protections. When Trump signs the bill, internet providers will be able to monitor their customers’ personal and financial information to sell highly targeted advertising.

The online advertising market is worth $83 billion according to emarketer.com, surpassing the television advertising market for the first time last year, so there is plenty of reason internet service providers (ISPs) want to sell your web history. But you need not worry. There are ways to retain your online privacy.

I have recently purchased what’s called a virtual private network service (VPN), which establishes a secure connection with an endpoint somewhere else on the internet so your ISP won’t know what you’re doing. If your internet privacy is worth $3 per month, I’d highly recommend purchasing a VPN service. Here are some VPN options compared on CNET. You can even make anonymous payments with Bitcoin or Skrill if you’re nervous about paying for the service with your debit or credit card.

If you’re not willing to pay for online privacy, it’s suggested you log out of any search engine before searching, because once you log on to Google or Yahoo or Bing, a profile is created to store your web history so they can sell it to advertisers.

SaferVPN.com also suggests you use your browser’s privacy mode available through your browser’s settings. This restricts your browser from saving your web history in its cache while disabling tracking cookies.

If you’re still nervous about using search engines, use DuckDuckGo.com. It doesn’t store your personal information. And don’t forget to surf the web securely. If a website has an https version of itself, use it. Just type https:// in front of the domain name instead of http://.

This was originally published at GCNLive.com.