Protecting Yourself While Browsing The Net

Protecting Yourself While Browsing The Net

There are many ways third parties can invade your privacy while you are browsing through the net. There are two main aspects to this discussion. One of them is about internal risks and the other is about external risks.

The internal risks include social engineering someone to get sensitive data, uploading malicious malware through pop-ups and links, gathering private data through the session information, and gaining remote access to the target system. In short, most of the internal risks come from a third party taking advantage of a lack of attention from the user. This is not the topic of this paper.

The external risks are not dependent on the user’s distraction. They target systems and programs of users. They exploit the security holes in the system and secretly place themselves in a place of control.

When it comes to The Internet, third parties take advantage of security holes in the communication tubes of users. And yes, all network communication over the net is basically a tube connecting two end-users. For simplicity, let's accept that The Internet as we know it, is just held together with band-aids and invisible rabbits disguised as black magic. So, not so secure.

We will look into protecting ourselves from external interference. Let's visualize our connection to any site like this:

You --- The Internet --- The Site

We don't know what goes on on The Internet side of things so we want to reduce our footprint over it.

The Internet is a network of routers. You have a router, it is integrated into your modem. Your router is your access point to The Internet. In the giant network of the net, you are not a computer but a router. And how others recognize you is through your IP address. Which is actually your router's IP address, not exactly «yours». For more information on how the internet works, stay tuned.

Attackers will more often than not try to find your IP address and control the network traffic between your router and the site. Attackers usually don’t listen to random routers, they listen to the incoming connection requests to the site and pick their victim from there. So the first line of defense is hiding our IP address from the site itself. If the site doesn’t know who we are then any listeners also don’t know who we are(simplified).

We are going to start with heavy weapons, Tor Browser is going to be the first layer of defense. Tor Browser directs your connections through its Tor Network. Tor, short for Tor Network, makes it really hard to distinguish users and keep track of data traffic. Tor also encrypts all data going into the network and at every step of the network another layer of encryption gets peeled off until the data returns back to its original state at the exit node.

When connecting through the Tor, your router will connect to an entry node of Tor and leave Tor at an exit node. At this stage your connection to the site should look like this:

You --- The Internet --- Tor Network --- The Site

Because you are connecting through Tor, anyone listening to the connections will see the IP address of a Tor exit node and not your actual IP address.

But let's go back to the entry point to Tor. The node you connect to Tor through is called your Guard. From within the Tor Browser, you can, at any given time, choose to get a new route to your destination site. And Tor will reroute your connection through different nodes inside its network. But, your entry point to the Tor will stay the same, it is your Guard.

You can also ask Tor Browser to give you a new identity. With enough new identities, you can force Tor to change your Guard. A single reshuffle will not guarantee a change in your Guard, and will probably not change it. Regardless, your Guard will change by itself within every few weeks or few months.

But, why are we talking about Guards here? Because there not many of them. Tor is a network of volunteer routers. Their numbers are in thousands, and this number is ridiculously small compared to the giant network of the web. And exactly because there aren't many of them, they are susceptible to being listened to, too.

There is also the case of your Internet Service Provider(ISP) not approving you connecting to Tor. Some countries, like China, completely ban connecting to Tor and some others forcefully throttle your connection speed when connecting to Tor. Even if your ISP doesn’t take an action, it will raise some eyebrows and attract unwanted attention that you are connecting to Tor.

At this stage, Virtual Private Networks(VPN) come to the rescue. VPN services are dedicated servers scattered across the globe to help you safely and privately connect to any site you want to connect to. In this case, it is your Guard. VPN works like Proxy servers. Your connection goes to the Proxy server and the server connects to the Guard for you. For your ISP, you are connecting to a VPN server and for anyone listening to your Guard, it is the VPN server that is connecting. So your connection is now like this:

You --- The Internet --- VPN Servers --- Tor Network --- The Site

But this is not strictly true. Tor is for anonymity but VPNs are for privacy and sometimes security. So the correct presentation is more like this:

You === VPN Servers === Tor Network --- The Site

I used «=» to indicate security. Looks much more secure right?

One question you might ask is, «Where did The Internet go?». And this is a completely valid question. The answer is, we no longer need to worry about that at this point because all VPNs need to use an encryption system to accept data from their users. So all of your data going across the internet is already encrypted.

While it is mostly safe for your data to be traveling across until it leaves Tor, take note that there are no strict security measures beyond Tor. This is because once your data reaches the exit node on Tor, it loses its last layer of encryption and your data is exposed to the exit node. And even if the data is anonymous and coming from a Tor node, it is still your data that will be traveling the rest of the journey.

To overcome this problem and to put another layer of security across all nodes within the connection, we should always use HTTPS sites. HTTPS requires you to use its own encryption over your data before sending it which also blocks your VPN service from going through your data.

In the end, your connection should look like this:

You ≡≡≡ VPN Server ≡≡≡ Tor Network === HTTPS Site

If the HTTPS site doesn't accept connections from Tor and you want to go the extra mile, you can connect to another Proxy server whatever be it another VPN or pure Proxy. But it doesn't add another layer of security, it is for convenience. At this point, you can feel safe that you are doing most of what you can do to protect yourself and your data from strangers.

While for some this might seem excessive, it is definitely not exhaustive. Stay safe and remember to use protection.