Why would someone in this "social" age want to be anonymous?

We live in a time when a significant part of communication takes place over the Internet, to be more precise a substantial part of communication takes place through services of different corporations. Facebook, Google, Youtube, Twitter, Skype are some of the services which millions of us use to interact with friends, family, conduct buisnes .

Companies cooperate with intelligence agencies, they are collecting data on the activities on the Internet and over mobile networks thus contributing to a system of mass surveillance. Various corporations and other institutions mainly do it with intention to make money, either by using them to optimize their marketing and sales strategies, or by selling them to other entities who want to use them for the same purposes.

Imagine for a moment that every conversation and every form of communication in the world is accessible to them and how it affects your privacy. These companies collect information about your searches over the internet, who contact's who, manner in witch you communicate as well as content of communication, they know who your friends are, what you like, dislike, what are your political views, religious views, etc.

Privacy is not only the right but also the natural need of every human being. Everyone has the right to free activities on the Internet without anyone’s control over it. Regardless of whether or not you have something to hide, protecting your privacy is a matter of principle, it’s about accessing data without your knowledge and consent for reasons unknown.

What can we do to protect our privacy?

First step is to consider your current level of security and to improve it. Aim of this book is to do precisely that. We will cover steps to achieve and maintain system security. Later on we will go trough encryption methods for securing data on our hard drives as well as cloud storage. Then we will move on to how securely delete data or entire hard drive so that there are no traces of our presence. Next stop will be securing communication by means of encryption for mail, chat and using the web with anonymizing networks.

Second step and this one is as important as the first one. Spread awareness about the need for the internet as a medium and as a source of information to remain as much as possible free, unattended and neutral. To ultimately preserve it as a free source of information for the future.

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

- Benjamin Franklin