Recent Facebook fiasco is still fresh on everyone’s minds, and Mark Zuckerberg is no longer the start-up poster child with a potential political future. While the ethics of Facebook’s business model and it’s addictive nature is being debated it is fair to turn our sights on another company which is synonymous with Internet on most of our minds – “Google”.
If I would tell you to think about the last time you were really honest, I doubt you would think about last night when you used google, however according to advertisers worldwide and data scientists that‘s exactly the case.
Everyone had one of those moments – when you have a thought you would unlikely share with a stranger, or even a loved one, but googling seems like a safe bet. When you do not want to visit the doctor, but you surely will use someone’s on the internet expertise, or when something which you are ashamed about is clouding your mind and you seek an answer. And that’s just barely scratching the surface – what about Google Maps which is on everyone’s phone, or Google Analytics which tracks you whenever you are logged in or not.
Google knows whatever you are divorced, gay, sick or depressed and all that knowledge is for sale. If you thought NSA is bad, realize that “Google” is multinational data mining congregate and has no outside regulation at all. Whatever your opinions are on the government, the fact that unelected and unknown individuals have that much information and power with it is unnerving.
One possible way to counter such privacy intrusions and keep using Google is to use a VPN service. VPN lets you mask your real location, and if you don’t log into your Gmail account while surfing it will also help to hide your search results and to avoid psychological profiling. If you are more worried about spying by your government it is a good idea to pick a VPN based outside 14 eyes – a surveillance agreement between 14 western countries. One of the best choices in such scenario is NordVPN which is based in Panama and has a strict “no-logs” policy. With over 4000 servers worldwide it provides quite a few choices to pick from to stay private.
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Disclosure: ValueWalk has an affiliate partnership with NordVPN and some links are affiliate links, we only get paid if you buy the product – We believe NordVPN is one of the (if not the best) VPN providers out there. Additionally, it costs you nothing extra and the purchase is anonymous from our end.