Do you care about your online privacy? Most of us don't. We are Okay if someone is peeping what we are doing in the Internet, where we establish connection to the world, what have we browsed in the Amazon. Maybe you are not Okay with all the listed traciking activities upon you, but unfortunately those trackings happens all the time in the backend that ordinary user would not even notice.
How do you feel if someone keeps peeping at you?
Comparing our real-life and Internet-life could be funny. Imagine the following scene:
You are having a leisure window-shopping walk in a mall, a brand new Nike sneaker behind display windows get your attention that you spent a few glances at it and then walk away. Soon, one or two sales persons pop up out of nowhere promoting sport sneakers to you, because they have been lurking in the dark corner tracking what your shopping behaviour.
What would you do to the sales person? Undoubtedly, you turn down the offer and dismiss them irritatically realizing how they sneaking behind you and observe the trails you left behind. If we put this scenario in the digital world and no one is making a complaint, as it is what Google do upon us all everyday. Last minute we were surfing something commercial, the next minute the creepy Google will start to push related advertisements. But no one gets mad over it.
Internet privacy is more important that what you think
I used to think my privacy matters nothing on the Internet, as I'm not the any sort of superstar or celebrities so no one would care about my information. This mindset is as wrong as "It's Okay I can live in a house without walls because I'm not a star.".
We do not value our privacy much in the World Wide Web because we don't see the way to cash it, which is what Google does best while building a kingdom of advertisement. Let's say you have no problem with the commercial part, exposing everything online might put one in a danger place if some ill-purposed parties have some interest in exploiting the naked sheep.
Furtheremore, in the coming era of cryptocurrencies, network privacy has never been so vital when everyone is literally running its own bank. You know how to harden the defence online first before investing in the crypto, not the other way round. Network security will be one of the fundamental classes in the future primary school.
So how to preserve our anonymity?
Tor would be the best and free option for most people, but the drawback is the slow performance. VPN can be a great alternative for high privacy and speed at the cost of subscription fee for the service. And it could be tricky to find a reliable VPN service provider who would truly protecting their customer's privacy.
Are you still decided to walk on the street naked?
网络隐私一直以来都是被大众忽略的一块，其根本原因是因为数码的世界太复杂了。作为很可能天天隐私被侵犯的大众之一，你可能觉得这样的课题有点小题大做，看看以下的情景模拟：
在一个悠闲的下午，走在广场的你被玻璃柜里的新款 Nike 球鞋吸引了目光。短暂打量了一会以后，你就继续往前走了。说时迟那时快，前面拐角处就蹦出个推销员小哥，手上拿着球鞋向你推销。仔细一看，咦，这不是刚才看过的同款球鞋吗？为什么他会知道呢？很简单，因为他一直躲在角落里观察和记录你的行动。
那你如何反应呢？大概率是恶心的说一句"滚"。但有没想过，这个正是 Google 百度等天天在对你做的事情，你却处之泰然。