This diagram and helpful interactive site from the Electronic Frontier Foundation help to explain why your Internet and data privacy are not an “all or nothing” consideration. There are many influences trying to convince you that “privacy” is dead but you can push back! In this diagram you can see how data flows from your personal computing devices, to your home WiFi router, and then to your ISP and beyond. Even in this diagram the path from your home connection to your destination is dramatically simplified, ignoring data centers, uplinks, downlinks, marketing partners, advertisers, foreign governments and networks, and more. But if you take a minute to visit the interactive, you can see how Tor and HTTPS dramatically change how vulnerable you really are on the Internet. In the example for this diagram, a user is trying to get from their home network to a hypothetical online resource – in this case “Site.com”. Even if they choose to visit Site.com, identify themselves, log in, and share their personal information or preferences when they use Tor and HTTPS they prevent small army of would-be eavesdroppers from monitoring their activity. More importantly, when they do log in, there is nothing that prevents them from choosing to use private, anonymous email, fabricate personal details, or simply keep their home address and personal demographics private.
