How to Protect Yourself against Online Spying, NSA PRISM/Fairview can spy on anyone

Americans (and now other countries) are becoming increasingly concerned with the online protection of their personal information. There have been numerous stories in the press lately of hacked websites, identity theft, and eavesdropping, among many other alarming “criminal” acts. Recently, the Washington Post ran a story that included the publishing of four slides, all leaked from the United States National Security Agency (NSA). These slides clearly discussed, in extreme detail, how the domestic PRISM program collects its data.

Other countries are also being “spied” on with a different surveillance program called Fairview. A recent example is the surveillance on millions of citizens of Brazil.

Alarmingly enough, the collection process is incredibly simple. All that has to transpire in order for data collection to begin is for an NSA analyst to identify a potential target for surveillance and then ask a supervisor to approve the request. What if you happen to be one of these unfortunate individuals who is targeted? Is there a way that you can forgo the monitoring process and increase your online protection for your data and browsing activities?

Most experts agree that PRISM is capable of creating “wiretaps” on high capacity fiber optics and watches the data flows past. These wiretaps are easily placed at the Internet connections of such noteworthy conglomerates as Facebook, Yahoo, Apple, and Google, with most of their servers located in the United States.

Copies of the information traveling along these optic signals are diverted and re-routed to a location that is specifically operated by the NSA. Here it is categorized and indexed. Afterwards, it is sent back for analysis to the NSA. Most of this collected data is transferred by methods of plain text protocols. These are simply packets of information that contain a simple text header with a clear payload (the actual data).

However, what the Washington Post story also revealed is that when the payload is encrypted, the NSA is typically unable to crack the code. The below checklist includes ways to minimize the threat of potential NSA (and other hackers/spyware/trojans) monitoring for both digital voice and Internet traffic, leading to an increase in protection for your online activities.

1. Encryption of Internet traffic

A sure sign that communication between your web browser and a website is encrypted will be the use of the “https://” SSL protocol preceding the website address. By always typing this prior to entering your URL name into the browser, an encryption certificate will be downloaded from the website automatically (if it supports encryption). If the “https” is not clearly showing in your web browser, then the communication between your browser and the webserver is not encrypted. Check your most commonly visited websites for … read more here http://davidpapp.com/2013/09/05/how-to-protect-yourself-against-online-spying-nsa-prismfairview-can-spy-on-anyone/