The trend of government spying reached the Canadian users, NSA contractor Ed Snowden uncovered the massive internet spying apparatus of US government and incidentally exposed “five-eyes” partnership surveillance that includes Canada. This news increased the privacy concerns among Canadians. As per the Bill C-59, government security agencies are allowed to collect ‘publicly available’ info on Canadians, but with limited power. It’s further revealed that Canadian authorities had illegally kept and analyzed personal data for a decade, on people who posed no national security threats.
An internet is a system that passes through different gateways, located in different geographical locations. A large number of Canadian internet traffic routed through the US means nobody knows what happened with the data within the US territory. It is possible that the data may be snoop on by US spying agencies. Like you send an email that moves to the cloud storage located in the US, and there are chances that your exposed files are being breached. This is the right time for Canadians to use encryption technologies like VPN, to ensure absolute anonymity.
Canada is among the most significant countries in the world; in population and as well in the internet usage. More than 30 million Canadians use the internet, and 80% of them access the internet daily. Unfortunately, 57% of Canadians are unaware of the fact that their internet infrastructure runs through the US. Government role in “Data Localization” is minimal for years and the soft nature of Canadians further delaying the government’s active participation on this front. NAFTA negotiations on storing the local data within the geographical locality are on the table with the US. The US, on the other hand, favors the global data flows and pushing hard for data localization.
So, How Can Canadians Prevent Their Online Information Involuntarily Being Harvested?
Virtual private network (VPN) is the tool that encrypts web traffic in a secure tunnel between the connecting devices. With a trustworthy Canada VPN, your browsing would never be snooped, interfere and censored.
Now, that’s not just a requirement for adults in the population, lately, Children have been in the spotlight of a lot of advertisement companies in Canada that are targeting age groups from 3 to 15 years old. Imagine your kid playing his/her favorite game and some click-baiting ad comes on with not so very good intentions? So, opting for ad-blockers is another good option for keeping things intact.
Moreover, a general rule of thumb is that “Don’t share anything that you won’t be able to explain later.” It doesn’t just go with Canada, but citizens of every country/region. If you are among the two-thirds of the Canadians that do not know US intervention and how data-localization, than don’t worry it’s not your fault and believe me there is no shame; you are not alone.
See, it’s easy to blame the Government, and while you have every right to do so when things aren’t to ideal, but, if you don’t take protective measures to protect your privacy by yourself, then that would be your fault. The government would adopt continued spying practices; you can bypass their surveillance if you want to protect your privacy and anonymity in the digital world.
