Would you like to find more information about someone by their phone number? Would you like to know someone's geolocation by their phone number? A phone number can reveal a lot about you, and it can be a privacy threat if abused. It can also make our lives easier if used properly under the party's agreement. Spying someone without their permission is illegal, and it should be avoided.

With Apple's new tightened privacy policy debuting on iOS 14, advertisers must obtain user's consent before they can track user's mobile app activities. Apple allowed mobile advertising ID (IDFA) on iOS and iPadOS devices, but they will no longer available without the user's consent. If an app asks a user to grant permission to track their activities, chances are that most users will deny it as no one wants to be tracked. This is a big problem for advertisers as they will have difficulty finding how users are reacting to their advertisements, and tracking behaviors and conversions.

With growing trend in consumer privacy concerns and exponential growth in data breaches, the state of California has created the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in 2018, and fully in effect on January 1, 2020. CCPA gives consumers more control over how businesses collect and use their personal information, and gives them the right to know, opt-out, delete, and non-discriminated for exercising their privacy rights.

GDPR is a European privacy and security law that requires any organization that handles personally identifiable data of EU citizens to comply with its regulations. European Union mandated all organizations to comply with GDPR beginning on May 25, 2018. The GDPR imposes hefty fines for those who violate its privacy and security standards. With more and more personal data stored in the cloud, the EU is signaling the world that personal data must be treated private and stored securely. The GDPR is not only applicable to large corporations but also abides by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

An email is the easiest way for scammers to mass distribute "fake" messages to people, and it takes very minimal effort on their part. Email service providers such as Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo! do their due diligence and filter all suspicious emails but scammers are finding new ways to bypass such filters. As end-users, we must do our own due diligence and avoid all scams used by scammers to trick us.

Identity Theft is the term used to steal someone's personal information, and use it to disguise one's identity and use it in cybercrime and fraud for financial gain. With everyone shifting financial activities to online, hackers and thieves are stealing personal information to use them in illegal activities.

Before we can talk about faking an IP address, we need to know what an IP address is and how it is used. An IP Address is an unique address assigned to a computing devices such as a computer, tablet or smartphone. An IP address is analogues to postal address of a house (or phone number of your smartphone), where two houses cannot have the same address as a mailman will be confused where to deliver the mail. Similarly, an IP address must be unique within the globe so that a message can be delivered to an intended device.

The issue of online privacy or better said, the lack of it, has become one of the hottest topics on the Internet over the past few years. While there are certain initiatives and actions to introduce dedicated and separate privacy laws, all of this is still in its early stages. In light of this, here are ten quick tips on how to maintain online privacy going into 2020.

When we speak about online privacy, we constantly make references to the VPN. VPN stands for Virtual Private Network and completely secures traffic by using point-to-point encryption. VPN maintains anonymity by hiding your IP address. However, the VPN provider would be able to know your real IP address as they are the ones who will mask your real IP with a virtual IP.

Most smartphone users may not know this, but Google has been tracking your locations and routes you took to go place to place. Unless you have intentionally turned off the location history settings, Google has been keeping track of your locations from the moment you own your smartphone. It may be mind-boggling for some users, but Google advertises it as a free service offered you to help track your location history. The service is available on both desktop and mobile users, and you can edit, delete or disable location history in your timeline. Your location timeline is private, so only you can view it after logging into Google account. To view your location history, you may visit