Each year on the 17th of May, humanity celebrates World Telecommunication and Information Society Day. This event is organized to celebrate the emergence of online communication and communities and unrestricted internet access.

However, some forces try to limit this free-flow of information and put restraints on online communities. In this article, I will discuss the current dangers that online freedom is facing, but critique without a solution is a job half done. I will also elaborate on specific technologies that oppose restrictions and help people connect safely, privately and without constraints.

The current situation of online freedom

Two days ago, BBC released an article with a frightening title: “The global internet is disintegrating. What comes next?” In the article, BBC outlines how individual states, like Russia and Syria, addressed the United Nations to push restrictions on the open and unrestricted internet. They wanted to control access to the World Wide Web. The request was denied.

But that didn’t stop Russia. Right now, Roskomnadzor (Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media of Russia) is planning to separate Russia from the World Wide Web and develop their own internet. China, up to some point, has successfully built a Great Firewall of China that controls the flow of information online. North Korea is cut off completely.

However, people still manage to bypass the restrictions and enjoy online freedom. So let’s see what can be done to avoid these blocks and practice our right to open internet.

Virtual Private Networks stand up to the challenge

Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a software application that provides safe, anonymous, and private access to the internet.

Without a VPN, all your browsing activity is logged by your Internet Service Provider (ISP), and all your online activities are tracked. The issue is that your ISP must comply with national laws and if a particular authoritarian government wants to spy on you or even block access to certain websites (like Wikipedia ban in China), they can force ISP to do that.

Here’s where VPN kicks in. Instead of connecting to the ISP server, you are connected to the VPNs server that functions as your private and secure gateway to the internet. Furthermore, VPN encrypts all your traffic, and no one can spy on your online activities because they cannot decrypt it. To put it short, authoritarian countries don’t like VPNs and here’s a proof, a list of states that banned the use of VPNs.

How to choose the right VPN?

First of all, avoid 14-eyes countries. These are countries that agreed to collect and share massive surveillance data. If your chosen VPN is located in one of those countries then, at some point, the government can ask to provide your online activities logs. Obliged by law, these VPN providers will have to submit.

Second, pick a VPN that has a strict no-logs policy. NordVPN is a fitting example since they have established their headquarters in Panama, where data-retention is not mandatory. Furthermore, NordVPN willingly submitted to an independent audit to prove they keep no logs and you can read about it on their blog.

Third, frequent updates are of utmost importance. China is continually improving their Firewall, so VPN providers need to catch up to bypass restrictions. Same goes for HBO, Netflix, and other streaming providers that implement geo-restrictions. Same goes for Article 13 in the EU that will put massive restrictions on online content creators, the so-called “meme ban”.

Web browser importance for online privacy

Web browser is your primary access to internet and they also vary when it comes to privacy protection. Google’s Chrome is the most popular one, but by using it you are feeding Google all your activities online, which they then sell to third parties, mainly for advertisement.

Choosing the right browser takes some research, but over time TOR, Mozilla, and Brave forged their reputation as reliable providers. TOR is recommended for maximized anonymity settings, sending all your traffic through several nodes (volunteer computers) before reaching the final destination, significantly complicating tracking you online.

Mozilla, on the other hand, has one of the best privacy customizations so you can choose what’s gathered and what’s not. They also went through an audit to test their browsers vulnerabilities and shared the audit results online, which makes them a transparent and trustable provider.

Brave web browser

Brave was created by Brendan Eich, a person that gave birth to JavaScript coding language and former head of Mozilla.

Brave is a Chromium(Google’s open source browser)-based browser and it roused some healthy suspicions because of its relation to Google. However, over time they proved to be an independent and autonomous service that is concentrated on private and anonymous internet access. Chromium-base proved to be an advantage, because it successfully integrated add-ons and extensions that were developed specifically for Chrome.

This browser has an inbuilt tracker protection, AdBlock disabler, and forces HTTPS on every web page. The latter means that it forces encryption on all the pages you visit, meaning no one can spy on your browsing activities.

NordVPN

Personally, I use NordVPN because they are located outside of 14-eyes countries, have been audited and proved they keep no-logs, they have more than enough servers in 60 countries to bypass any restrictions and strongly oppose any attempt to put online restrictions. You can read their statement about Russia initiative to limit access to the internet here.

NordVPN is also offering a special deal for World Telecommunication and Information Society Day which you can get following this link.

Two other VPN providers, ExpressVPN and Surfshark, are also highly recommended by VPN review sites. Both are based in the British Virgin Islands with no data-retention laws and went through independent audits to test their browser extension security. The audits came out positive.

When using both these services, you will significantly improve your privacy protection online. It’s always best to do your own research before picking a service provider, but I hope my recommendations will be of use to some of the readers. Happy free internet day!