Is it possible to be anonymous on the web?

Internet use in the 21st century involves omnipresent surveillance and tracking of our every move. It’s hard to avoid constant surveillance when we use satellite maps, share our locations and photos on social networks, and when we pay for online purchases. Along with organizations that track our every move and improve their solutions in order to make our lives easier, we may also fall victim to cyber criminals who may use our data for illegal purposes.

What’s the point of being anonymous online?

It is possible to remain anonymous on the internet by using data and photo anonymization, using VPNs and programs that change our location or simply stop using the internet, although everyone knows that this would be a bit difficult. All sorts of data, such as image, address, and favorite websites are used not only by hackers. Search engines also use them for the best possible advertising and content typed into the search window, and that’s how we usually get what we’re looking for.

However, this solution often has its disadvantages. Given that online marketing stopped publishing ads everywhere it could a long time ago, we might not have to worry so much about our data. Marketing agencies and companies specializing in online advertising use our data to create content customized to us. It’s not so horrible, though, because marketers get only everything that we give them ourselves, so it’s better to avoid publishing too much information about us.

How to become anonymous online?

A VPN will take excellent care of the anonymity of our location and movements on the internet. But what about our online image? Photo anonymization will protect our image from being used by third parties, for example, by impersonating or creating false content related to us and that may involve serious consequences for us, even though we had nothing to do with it.

Incognito mode and online anonymity

As we all know, the browser’s incognito mode allows us to protect our privacy from unwanted visitors who might have access to our computer. However, it does not work as well as we may think. Incognito mode won’t hide our online activity completely, as it can be still seen by other users. What’s more, providers and vendors keep getting information about the sites we visit, and we can easily retrieve such browsing history from them.