How to protect your PC from PRISM surveillance

June 08, 2013

Thursday afternoon, a bombshell dropped: Two leading reports claimed that the U.S. government has been spying on emails, searches, Skype calls, and other electronic communications used by Americans for the last several years, via a program known as PRISM. According to the reports, the Web’s largest names—AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Skype, PalTalk, Yahoo, and YouTube—participated, perhaps unwittingly. (Dropbox will reportedly be added as well.) The report claims that the National Security Agency had “direct access” to servers owned by those companies. Most, if not all, of those companies have denied participating in PRISM, although it’s unclear whether they were unaware of the NSA’s spying, or simply turned a blind eye. According to The Guardian and The Washington Post, the data covered included: “email, video and voice chat, videos, photos, voice-over-IP chats, file transfers, social networking details, and more.” If nothing else, however, the PRISM disclosure is worrying and deeply shocking. If the report is accurate, the government may simply listen in on virtually any electronic communication you’ve made, in the interests of national security. Is this something that should be encouraged to fight domestic terrorism, or is this sort of government intrusion something that should be deeply distrusted? For the purposes of this story, we’re going to err on the side of the latter; whether you take advantage of our advice is up to you. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2041044/how-to-protect-your-pc-from-prism.html#tk.rss_howto