How to keep spies from monitoring you through your computer or your phone.

Those of you in The United States of America have most likely heard about that whole IRS scandal and the accompanying scandals of wiretapping of the Assicated Press. As for those not in the United States... I don't know what you have heard... So even if you do not know what I am talking about, this advice can still apply to you.

The title is self explanatory, but I would like to say that what you do with the information contained in this post is up to you. The software I will talk about is legal, but should not be used for anything illegal.

1. The Tor Browser: Tor stands for The Onion Router, and it means what it says. By using this browser, your IP address shows that you are somewhere where you are not. And, the tor browser also places your traffic through several routers in order to make sure that no one router node knows enough to find out where you actually are. This can fend off most attempts to spy on you while you are on the web.

2. VPN: You know that public Wi-Fi that your local cafe offers that is free to use? Well spies and cybercriminals alike are taking advantage by hacking into the Wi-Fi and watching your traffic. And from there, they can get enough information to commit identity theft if they want to. Don't like that? Well then you should use a VPN or a Virtual Private Network. This tool sends your traffic through a private network where the public Wi-Fi does not really get involved. Thus, making it impossible for someone that has hacked into the network to know what you are doing.

3. Google Voice: You can use this service from Google to route a phone call so that it appears that the caller is calling one telephone number that is not yours. But the connection gets connected to the number you provide. And because you can dump the fake number whenever you want, you can use it until the spy figures out why he is not getting any data from his tools.

4. Burner: A burner phone is a phone that contains no identifying info about you or where you are, it is cheap so that you can dispose of it when you need to. And... There actually is an app for that. Burner is an app that you can use that gives you a phone number that calls from your phone will appear as coming from. For example, if your cell phone number is 111-111-1111 and the app gives you the number 222-222-2222, anyone you call will see 222-222-2222 on their caller ID instead of 111-111-1111. This is not free, but it only costs 2 dollars for 20 minutes of talk time.

That is it for this post, thanks for stopping by and reading. As always, I invite readers to comment below with any questions or comments.