Online data privacy is a global problem, as the entire world is the playground for hackers and certain companies’ snooping practices affect all internet-connected users in the world. Thus, Africa is no exception: even though the cradle of humankind is a pretty poor continent where internet is often nothing more than a myth, there are still some people that need to be protected the same way Western internet users are. The biggest threats to African internet users are their own governments: they are now starting to understand how handy it could be to access as much private data about their citizens as possible. Often they undertake actions to prevent said information of ending up in the hands of either Facebook or Google, which is just one of the noble reasons many governments use when introducing internet blocks and new legislation.
In the media conference held by Bloomberg Africa in November 2016, the editor of an African tech news site announced that both Facebook and Google know more about African people than their own governments, especially about younger internet users. Interestingly, most African countries don’t share any information about their citizens at all, but instead create their policies that restrict online access in such way only the governments themselves can have access to said information.
As stated in the Freedom on the Net and the Mozilla Foundation reports, internet blackouts are quite common in African countries, especially in those where citizens are living under oppressive regimes. These blocks are applied as “emergency measures” and are the sign of governments being aware that big internet corporations have the biggest slice from the African citizens’ online data cake.
An infamous example of the above happened in 2016 in Nigeria, where the government wanted to silence anti-regime voices on social media by threatening citizens with heavy fines and even jail sentences. Thankfully this idea was ditched by the local Senate due to lack of support.
Although we have no right to condemn the practices of sovereign countries, we think that preventing citizens from accessing the internet is a brutal attack against the freedom of speech. However, not even oppressive governments can stand in the way of freedom, which, in this case, can arrive in the face of a simple tool with which users can hide from Big Brother’s eyes: VPNs.
This clever software allows you to disguise your real physical location by connecting you to foreign servers, therefore blindfolding whoever may want to spy on you. Furthermore, not only will your connection and data be heavily encrypted, but you can also circumvent blocks on websites and access the content that is banned for IP addresses of your nation.
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