How to protect your privacy in India?

India will link Aadhar with social media sites. This will make it difficult for citizens to criticize government policies e.g. corruption in ruling government, unnecessary government violence in sensitive areas like Kashmir, failing economic policies, etc. So here I will recommend some solution to help people retain their privacy.

The solution is to have two identities

1. One for areas where even if Government pries, there is no significant harm.
2. One for areas that we want to hide from Government.

For areas that don’t need privacy, you will have to sumbit Aadhar number. Here,

• Use popular browsers like Chrome, Firefox, etc.
• Use popular sites like Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, etc.
• Use popular messaging apps like WhatsApp, Messenger, iMessage, etc.

For areas that need privacy, do not submit Aadhar number. The website will think that you are outside India, and so will not insist on the same. Here,

• Never use browsers like Chrome, Firefox, etc. Use browsers like Tor Browser or Opera with VPN. These browsers don’t directly communicate with websites. They use one or more temporary hops in-between us and web site. So the website cannot find the originating country.
• Use a different identity while using popular sitesi.e. different Facebook account, different Twitter account, different Gmail mail id, etc. Use these identities only from a safe browser like Tor browser or Opera with VPN.
• Never use messaging apps like WhatsApp, Messenger or iMessage. Use private messaging service like Bleep. These services send/receive messages in encrypted format; they don’t store unencrypted messages on any server.

Of course, no method is fool proof. Technology keeps evolving. New techniques will emerge in next few years. But as of now, the above process can offer significant protection, to people, at low cost.