4 Essential Apps to Protect Your Privacy

Whether it’s social media platforms that sell our data to third-party advertisers that use tracking cookies to improve their e-commerce store offerings and understand their potential customers’ online behavior, everything we do online is tracked and measured. 

To be fair, this makes perfect sense. Many social media platforms offer their services for free in exchange for user data. Such data is so valuable that they’re often sold to third-party companies for a profit. 

After scandals like Cambridge Analytica, many people started looking for ways to maintain their digital privacy and enhance their online security. To help those just getting started on this journey, we’ve put together a list of four essential apps.

A Virtual Private Network 

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) do as the name suggests; they create a browsing network shielded from third parties. When you browse with a VPN enabled, all your traffic occurs in an encrypted tunnel that your internet service provider, government agencies, or any would-be hackers can’t view.

Not all VPNs are created equal, though. Look for a paid service, such as the ExpressVPN app that doesn’t keep or store any activity or connection logs.

An encrypted messenger

WhatsApp was once the go-to for encrypted messenger services. Still, people have been leaving in droves after the company’s acquisition by Facebook (now Meta) and some controversial changes to the service’s privacy policies. 

Two strong contenders are stepping up to fill its place: Signal and Telegram. Both offer encrypted messaging, but only Signal offers end-to-end encryption by default. Elon Musk even endorsed the service in a tweet that simply said: “Use Signal.”

A browser without all the cookies

Tracking cookies get a bad rap (and with good reason), but they also help make your browsing experience more fluid, or at least the advertisements you see more relevant. For many people, though, third-party tracking cookies represent the worst aspects of surveillance capitalism.

Choose a different browser to get away from the not-so-sweet treats for good. There’s a good chance you’re reading this article on Chrome, the world’s most popular browser but also one that’s popular for tracking user behaviors.

Other providers, including DuckDuckGo and Mozilla Firefox, have committed to limiting or prohibiting third-party cookies. The latter now offers Total Cookie Protection as its default for all users, meaning cookies are confined to the site where they came from instead of being free to follow you around. 

A good antivirus

You might think antivirus and antimalware programs are just for your laptops and desktops, but they’re also needed on your handheld devices, and yes, that includes your smartphone devices. 

These programs stop any nefarious people or bots from gaining access to your phone’s apps and all the data they contain, protecting you against phishing attempts, identity theft, and more. 

Are your apps helping to protect your online privacy, or are they part of the problem? If that’s the case, and you’d like to make some changes, start with the four apps we’ve detailed here and say hello to a more private internet experience.