Worried About Your Privacy Now? Here's How to Protect It

America has a new president-elect

who is, how should put it, unpredictable.

And we're not doing very well with cyber.

America also also has the NSA.

Which has a penchant for spying on innocent citizens.

(crowd chants)

There's no telling how the surveillance state

might change in the next four years.

But if you're interested in keeping

your private communications private

there are some steps you can take.

First up is an easy one.

WhatsApp.

You might already use it.

You also might not know that is already uses

something called end-to-end encryption.

So only you and the recipient

can read the messages you're sending.

That's because the messages are scrambled.

And only the recipient has the key required to translate it.

This is called end-to-end encryption

and it's great, but it has a vulnerability.

Namely that somebody can impersonate your recipient.

So WhatsApp has these security codes.

These let you confirm that

the person you're speaking to

is the intended recipient.

Another great option for encrypting messaging is Signal.

The cypher punk's app of choice.

Same principal as WhatsApp,

but Signal comes with a bonus.

Disappearing messages.

That means your messages are not only encrypted

they're also ephemeral.

That's a great thing for anybody

who wants to make sure their messages are totally secure.

Whether you're a journalist or a source.

As for email check out ProtonMail.

It's based out of Switzerland

so your data falls under Swiss privacy laws

instead of American ones.

It boasts end-to-end encryption

and doesn't log your IP address.

Making it anonymous.

Then there's Tor.

If you want anonymity across the board this is for you.

With Tor your computer never connects directly to a site.

Instead the software redirects your request

to a bunch of servers all over the world.

The last of which is the one communicates

with the site you're trying to access.

The site never sees your IP address.

Instead, it sees the IP for the last server in the chain.

Allowing you to browse anonymously.

All of that said, none of these tools is perfectly secure.

But if you're worried about the NSA and Trump

they are certainly better than nothing.

If you're worried about everything else

there's always yoga.