The recent push of official bodies in the US, EU and Australia against encryption...

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There's an ugly war going on against privacy and encryption.

More and more countries and their intelligence and law enforcement agencies are demanding to ban unbreakable encryption or that the manufacturers or service providers implement "backdoors" into their encryption tech.

Australia already has banned end to end encryption and has moved further in even discussing this issue. Check out this article here on this:

https://boingboing.net/2019/10/09/political-officers.html

Here's where we are at in this in the EU atm:

https://thenextweb.com/eu/2017/03/31/eu-plan-could-mean-a-backdoor-into-encrypted-messaging-apps-like-whatsapp/

...and the US, always a step ahead when it comes to making everyone a criminal that uses strong end to end encryption:

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/10/senators-threaten-encryption-regulation-for-tech-companies.html

These demands are coming from the need these officials see to have the means of fighting crime and terrorism in the cyberspace.

So you're using an VPN service to make sure that your privacy stays unspoiled? Good, but did you know there are clear signs that the NSA for instance has successfully breached a bunch of protocols that are used by VPN providers/VPN users?

https://www.slideshare.net/antitree/nsa-and-vpn

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So, Problem being, if the NSA can do this others can do this too and possibly it's done on a regular basis by more than a handful of nation states.

The "I have nothing to hide" people are again spoiling it for all of us I'm afraid.

Without encryption electronic commerce wouldn't have been possible, journalists, dissidents, and businesses would not be able to use electronic communication in a sufficient/safe manner and it's simply wrong put everybody that cherishes their privacy under general suspicion.

The majority of people use the cyber environment for completely legit causes but still don't want to be subject too anybody looking into what they do in their cyber actions.

They're trying to give agencies even easier access to all encrypted accounts and online data of all users also is against the constitution of most western countries!

Still it happens already by some in the intelligence space and even if it isn't done now already some of the 3 letter agencies have started to collect/log session data of VPN sessions for instance to possibly sometime later access what is for now securely encrypted.

For now you should consider using a VPN service that has a strict "no logging" policy and that uses strong military grade encryption (AES 256).

If your paranoia (rightfully so!) demands more than that also consider using VPN cascading to make it even harder for and attacker to breach your session data/connection logs. See this article here on this matter:

https://www.bestvpnanalysis.com/vpn-cascading-work/

Also, don't forget that using a VPN service does not make you untouchable in regards to tracking for instance.

Most people believe if they use an VPN they are safe from that ignoring the fact that your privacy in your online life can be compromised also by web accesses to sites that use tracking tech like cookies for instance.

So, please also consider using additional protection like ad blockers, sessions encryption forcing, and tracking cooky blockers for instance.

Of course you'll need to use browser tech that support this kind of add ons like Mozilla Firefox.

Check out the following add ons for firefox:

HTTPSeverywhere

Decentraleyes

uBlock Origin

Also I recommend that you checkout this video from https://twitter.com/naomibrockwell

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So what are your thoughts on this?

Let me know down in the comments!

Cheers!
Lucky