Wolverton: Tips on protecting your online activities

Encryption was once the province of the paranoid. But no more.

With the revelations from Edward Snowden of widespread spying by the government, many people are more interested in cloaking their online activities. Even if you're not be worried about the government reading your email or getting access to your browsing history, there are plenty of other reasons why you might want financial, legal or health information private and secure, whether from unscrupulous hackers or online marketers.

Here are some key technologies you can use to protect your online activities:

Tor. This is a set of linked pieces of software that helps to cloak users' online identities. "Tor" stands for "the onion router," a name that is emblematic of the layers of protections the software uses to anonymize users.

(AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)

When users seek Web pages through a Tor-enabled browser, their requests are encrypted and then go through a random series of computers on the Internet. Each computer, which has been set up by volunteers, relays the requests until they reach their end destination. Thanks to the design of the system, none of the relays nor the end server knows both who requested the Web page or what Web page was being requested.

Tor has been used by everyone from whistle-blowers to cyber-thieves to disguise their identity. It helps prevent people from learning what sites you visit or where you live. It's mostly used for accessing the Web, but the underlying relay network can also be used for instant messaging, email and other Internet applications.

Of the three encryption technologies discussed here, Tor is by far the easiest to set up and use. On a PC or an iPhone, you simply have to install one application. On an Android phone, you'll need to install two.

Although it's easy to configure, Tor does come with some frustrations that could limit how much you want to use it. The main drawback is that because requests go through multiple computers, some of them located half a world away, loading Web pages can be very slow, making your broadband connection feel like it's the dial-up Internet.

Because the relay network is global and your Internet address appears to be the one from the last server that relays your request, the websites you access may think you are a resident of Germany or Japan or some place other than California. So some websites, such as Google or eBay, may show you pages in a language other than English.

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Wolverton: Tips on protecting your online activities