How to Surf the Net More Safely

To help you fight identity theft, consider adding a VPN.

- EMMA PATCH

BY MONITORING YOUR INTERNET browsing activity, identity thieves can steal personal information and use it to hack into your financial accounts. And ID theft has spiked during the pandemic. The number of cases more than doubled from 2019 to 2020, to nearly 1.4 million, according to a recent report by the Federal Trade Commission.

One way to protect yourself is by using a virtual private network. With a VPN, your connection is encrypted, which means anyone trying to monitor it will see nothing more than an unintelligible sequence of letters and numbers. A VPN also hides your IP address from the websites you visit. An IP address is a unique online identifier, and it can help hackers stitch together information about you.