10 Ways to Protect the Privacy of Online Gamers!

10 Ways to Protect the Privacy of Online Gamers!

Most of the Gaming companies monitor all the in-game activities, which means they know more about you than you might want to share and unfortunately, hackers, ISPs and corporations have exploited the medium’s popularity to obtain gamers’ personal information and use it for their lucrative benefit.

The user’s personal data can be at risk especially from viruses, identity theft, social engineering scams, Webcam control and phishing attacks.

However, you can still protect your privacy by following the below mentioned ways that reduce your online data footprint while still playing the games you enjoy:

1. Use a VPN: A VPN is a privacy tool that can hide your IP address, thus concealing your geographical location and changing your DNS information.

2. Use Anti-Tracking Software or Extensions: Browser extensions, such as Privacy Badger, block cookies, code, and other attempts to track your activity on the internet.

3. Keep Your Anti-Malware Software Updated: Installing and updating a good anti-malware program is particularly important for gamers who download games from websites on the internet.

4. Choose Gaming Sites That Use HTTPS: Sites that use HTTPS encrypt data so that only the server and the recipient can see it.

5. Block Data Collection: Some games install services, such as Red Shell, that collect user data and use it to analyze players’ purchasing habits. These services can be blocked in the Windows hosts file by adding the IP address 0.0.0.0 and the hostname of the services you wish to block.

6. Create Strong, Unique Passwords: Create long passwords with a combination of lowercase and uppercase letters, numbers and symbols and use a unique password on every site.

7. Enable multi-factor authentication on your account: MFA secures your account by ensuring hackers need something you have (such as a hardware token or cell phone) or something you are (such as your fingerprint) in addition to something you know (such as a password), to access your account details.

8. Don’t Rely on Incognito Mode or Private Browsing: These services clear your cookies, history and cache and treat your browsing session as if you are not logged into anything. However, they don’t provide you with much protection from ISPs or other companies gathering your data.

9. Turn on ‘Do Not Track’: Most browsers have a ‘do not track’ feature in their settings. When this setting is enabled, it prevents web servers from using cookies to track you.

10. Unlink your social media accounts: Many game companies monitor all your in-game communications, which sometimes extends to social media posts.