Privacy is a fundamental human right. Everyone is entitled to their own domain – property, thoughts, identity, secrets, etc. – everything that defines one’s self. The concept of privacy is one of the cornerstones of modern civilization. Then why do people brush off as unimportant most efforts to safeguard privacy in the online world?

No matter what kind of Android phone you use, it is hard to escape Google’s presence. It is embedded in the OS your phone runs, and through it in every app you use. Google Services provide supplemental functionality to the various third-party apps running on your phone. And while there are plenty of cool and useful features Google Services make possible, they are undoubtedly a plague for one thing – privacy.

Are you worried about your online privacy? If you haven’t taken any measures to protect it, yes, you should be. Lucky for you, there is a rapidly growing industry of online security solution providers that would be happy to help you with that problem. These companies offer encrypted communication tools and claim they give you maximum security. Here’s how you should be able to tell apart the encrypted communication providers that you can actually trust.

Encryption might sound like something just hackers, spies, and criminals use. And yeah, those groups of people probably do use it. But this doesn’t mean they are the only ones that have a good reason to do so. You might be thinking that when you have nothing to hide, there’s no need to worry. You couldn’t be more wrong.

Edward Snowden once made the point that the reality of mass surveillance is always one election away. The technology to undertake it is already available and the privacy protection laws are like a duct-tape holding the floodgates – all you need is one 9/11 type of event and the tape will be done away with. But what could you do to preserve privacy when that happens?

Make no mistake – your data is being snooped on online. You don’t have to be an international spy to worry about online privacy. Breaches to it could be as mundane as internet providers storing metadata and selling it to third parties, or social networks monitoring your habits in order to offer you targeted advertising. The good news is that you won’t have to burn your smartphone and go live in the woods in order to reclaim online privacy.

The ballots were cast, the votes were counted and the winner is clear: Donald J. Trump will serve as the 45^th President of the United States of America. The question everyone is asking now is how will he run the country. On many issues the answers are not yet certain. Online privacy doesn't seem to be one of them.

You may have read numerous pieces on how online communication is hardly ever private. And since most of them are written from a purely technical standpoint, you may ask yourself “Okay, they read what I type, but so what?” Well, it ought to serve as a wake-up call when Amnesty International approaches it as a human rights issue.