The last few decades have been a crucial time period for consumer privacy. As the internet and technology
expanded our ability to connect
with others, so did it expand the ability for third parties to breach our privacy. Recent events have helped
bring to light the privacy exploitations
committed by companies and government entities. However, these events only matter if they affect consumer
behavior, which is the key question here.
Has the use and interest in consumer privacy tools changed in relation to key historical events?
Use the event selector below to analyze that historical event
The bar charts will be blank unless an event is selected
Select an event above to view more details
Google Trends Results for Privacy Tools
Google Trends measures relative interest in certain terms using the worldwide number
of searches for those terms. A score of 100 corresponds to the highest interest
level that any of these terms achieved over the time period. A score of 50 means
half of that interest level. This allows us to roughly gauge how interested people were in tools
that help consumers protect their online privacy.
A VPN creates an encrypted tunnel from your device to the VPN provider, and
routes all your Internet traffic through this tunnel. Then the VPN provider
forwards your traffic to the website you wanted to access. They are marketed as
a privacy improvement in cases where your Internet access is untrustworthy, such
as the Wi-Fi at a hotel. But it's important to keep in mind that the VPN
provider itself may see your traffic, so you must choose a provider that you
trust not to do that.
TOR (The Onion Router) is a protocol for highly secure Internet access. It works
by encrypting your data with several layers, and routing it through a series of
nodes. Each node only undoes one layer of encryption, which makes it difficult
for a third party to track the path that it took since the data transmitted each
time is different.
DuckDuckGo is a privacy-preserving search engine. They also provide additional
tools such as a browser extension that blocks tracking scripts.
Brave is a web browser based on Chromium (which is also the base for Google
Chrome and Microsoft Edge) with privacy tools (like an ad blocker and support
for sending traffic over TOR) built-in.
Startpage is another privacy-preserving engine. It delivers Google search
results but proxied via their server so that Google can't track your search
traffic.
Data at Selected Event
Social Media
Social Media exists on the complete opposite spectrum of privacy compared to these aforementioned privacy tools.
There are very few laws and
oversight governing the handling of
private information, which can lead to a gross abuse of trust by these companies. In light of the
massive privacy scandals over the years,
we can see that there has been very little slow down in the growth of these companies.
Data at Selected Event
Search Engines
Search Engines are especially dangerous to privacy with how much personal information they have access
to. The revenue model of search engines is based on collected user search data to sell to online advertisers.
They also suffer from a lot of
the same issues as social media, having very limited goverment oversight. Although not as much as social
media, nearly all search companies have been
subject to data breaches or privacy scandals over the years. We can see that there is a slight downward trend in
the leading
search engine (Google Search). However it is still far and away the most popular search engine
and towers over DuckDuckGo, the most popular privacy-centric search engine.
Data at Selected Event
VPNs
VPNs are one of the best tools for consumer privacy. As mentioned in the Google Trends section, they work
by hiding your internet traffic through an encrypted tunnel. This makes your internet experience more
private, helping prevent your Internet Service Provider as well as other potentially malicious
data farming entities from seeing what you are doing. We can see that VPN usage has boomed in recent years
(starting in 2017),
perhaps due to an increased awareness in the need for online privacy. Despite that,
the total amount is still a small percentage (<10%)
Data at Selected Event
What can you do?
We can see from the data that while some privacy tools are on the rise in the public eye,
the vast majority not only neglect to use these services but they also
still use services that actively threaten their online privacy, despite these events.
If you want to protect yourself against these threats, here are some great tools!
Brave Browser is a user friendly, privacy focused
browser that comes built in with tools
to help protect you on the web. It isn't as protective as some of the tools on this
but it can work great in conjunction with them. It is also built on top of Chromium so if
you're used to Google Chrome you won't be missing out on any of those Chrome features.
Firefox is also a great option, although the privacy options are not enabled by default
like they are on Brave Browser and as a result it requires a lot more tinkering.
ProtonVPN is a completely free and unlimited
VPN service that offers a multitude of servers in three different countries (US, Japan, Netherlands).
Proton also has a
no-tracking policy, so you can feel safe knowing your data is not being taken
advantage of. Having a Proton account also gives you access to Proton Mail
account for free, which is a security and privacy driven emailing service.
DuckDuckGo, as mentioned before, is the leading
privacy-focused search engine in the market. It still has ads like Google and other invasive search engines,
but what makes DuckDuckGo different is how they get those ads. The ads are based solely on the search terms
in each search you give it. There is no history or log of searches being kept, and no data profile being
developed.
Another great alternative is Startpage, which
you can use if you prefer Google's search results
but want to maintain privacy.
TOR Browser is a browser
that encorporates the aforementioned TOR protocol to secure your internet browsing in several layers
of encryption. Load times can be slow, especially when compared to a VPN like Proton. Most of the time,
just using Brave Browser + a private search engine like DuckDuckGo and maybe a VPN is sufficient.
However, if you feel it is necessary TOR offers a level of privacy beyond all of those. It also isn't
owned by one specific private company, so you don't have to worry about a malicious third party potentially
trying to use your internet traffic for profit.
Brave Browser has a built in option to enable the TOR protocol
if you'd like to try it out without downloading a seperate browser.
Everything mentioned here is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the options you have
to help keep you privacy safe. Whether you're talking about cloud storage, messaging services,
password managers, or many of the other things you use the internet for, there is usually some level
of data collection involved. Luckily, this also means that there's a ton of privacy centric alternatives
in these areas. privacytools.io is a great
resource if you are interested in diving deep into all the options you have available.
Created By Ben Grant Brandon Lovelady Alex Gehret Rohan Venkatapuram
