Here's Why Every Canadian Needs To Think Seriously About Their Online Privacy

Posted by rachaeleverly on December 22nd, 2017

Image Source

Canada is one of the largest countries in the world, not only in population but also in the internet usage. According to a report by Statista.com, 32.12 million users use the internet, and 80% of them access the internet daily, that is huge. The internet accessibility rise so does the concerns surrounding digital privacy. Netizens are prone to losing their digital anonymity and sharing of users’ data is being done in unimaginable ways by those “in charge”.

c; losing identities and personal information becoming a nightmare for them.

A survey by the CIRA, revealed that 76 percent of Canadians are concerned about the security and privacy of their personal information if stored/routed through the US, but unfortunately one-third of the Canadians know that their data is being routed through the USA. Another report published by priv,gc.ca, which bring out the fact that more than 50 percent Canadians has sound knowledge of their privacy rights and 52 percent of them are confident about how new technologies are affecting their privacy. It further reveals that 86 percent of Canadians expect websites to consider user's’ consent before using their information and should share their use of data.

Privacy laws differ around the world but, share the ground principle; the collection, use and disclosure of personal information require user consent. Recently, an Anti-terrorism Act, Bill C-51 is a mere surveillance empowered by Canadian Security Intelligence Service, to interfere in Canada's digital activities for the sake of suspecting terrorism threshold. It also permits sharing of personal data between governing bodies. 

Canadians started outrageous practices to repeal the bill and protested to restrict police and other agencies to breach Canadians right-to-be anonymous without an official warrant, as this is the standard practice of ISPs to share users data on enforcement official's’ request.

The virtual world offers tremendous convenience so do the risks for privacy, your digital footprints becoming a useful tool for marketing and other unimaginable services. Either you post a photo or thought, it lives in cyberspace forever whether you delete it or not, due to the nature of the internet. Rising social media platforms give rise to the sophistication in the cyber-criminalism. This is the high-time for Canadians to protect their digital identities by using encryption and a VPN for Canadian netizens.

Encryption scrambles text into unreadable codes that can only be decoded with the keys available to both data-sharing users. This is more a must-have strategy than an added option. Don’t delay adopting encryption to save your data falling into the wrong hands for now and for the future.

VPN is the tool used to hide original IP to enjoy safe browsing and permits users to access all the geo-restricted contents. Many popular VPN providers allow users to block online trackers and loggers by simply limit advertisers to track personal information and does not keep a track record of user’s activities.

As per McAfee’s latest findings, an annual loss of million reported in cybercrime only in Canada and thousands of Canadians lost their jobs due to increasing cybercrimes. According to a poll by cbc.ca, only 15 percent Canadians use encryption to protect their virtual communication, to avoid snooping of the data and only 17 percent users in Canada use virtual private network (VPN), which is relatively lesser than the average internet consumption in any security strategy to deter hackers and cybercriminals.

“Privacy is not dead unless WE let it be.”

Canadians! If you don’t protect your Privacy, Who will?

Canada's digital privacy and security never be assured by the governing bodies as they are didactic enough to rule out in any way they want, it’s the user that needs to take actions to protect oneself from being identified in the virtual world. Using software that encrypts your online communications are the only ways out to protect anonymity and enjoying true digital freedom. Otherwise, C-51 would be turned into law anytime and your digital activities would record in the different clouds forever and can easily be used in any good and bad connotation that keeps you at stake the entire life.