Farwa Sajjad in Internet Privacy Laws All Around The World 2019 | March 6, 2019

Prevention Against Thailand’s New Cyber Security Bill 2020

In an era where cybersecurity has become a significant concern for most of the people, any new rules and laws by the State come as a challenge and hurdle for the people. The data retention laws vary from country to country. However, those counties who have implemented data retention laws are highly criticized by the general public.

Recently, Thailand’s government moves forward a contentious and provocative bill regarding cybersecurity. The law is severely criticized for its nebulousness and the possibility to have access to user internet data.

The bill got revised last year as it faces severe criticism over the potential data access. However, the country’s parliament passed it with 133 positives votes and with no rejections.

What’s the new bill all about?

The Thai legislation passed a new cybersecurity bill which allows the higher authorities including the agencies to get access to people’s personal information without having an order from the court.

The recent cybersecurity act addresses computer hacking crimes. However, the activists fear it will permit the government to get access to people’s personal and private information.

Under this act, various state officials without having court orders have the power to

Search
capture
break into
make individual copies of computers, computer systems, and data in computers
It also allows the higher authorities to request for real-time access to all the information which is associated with those causing cyber-attacks and threats.

Thailand has already some powerful crimes laws, which make it illegal to criticize the realm and have used to imprisoned citizens for leaving comments on social media and websites. Previously, the state has censored specific sites like the Daily Mail and also YouTube too.

What can be done to remain safe?

To safeguard your online privacy, you can set a strong password, enable the two-factor authentication, and can also go with the most recent option of using a VPN.

Yes, you heard it right. You can use a VPN if you want to get rid of government surveillance and also don’t want the higher authorities to have access to your personal information.

You might get surprised thinking that how a service can help you to avoid authorities from snooping into your private information?

Well! A VPN is a type of a network which helps you to communicate across a public via a protected and encrypted network. Now, all the authorities in Thailand have the power to access user’s information. This also gives a chance for hackers to target people. In this way, internet usage becomes extremely dangerous; therefore; to secure and protect all of your activities you can use a VPN.

How a VPN can help you?

There are other numerous ways you should use a VPN to stay safe against the newly passed cybersecurity bill. Following are some of the ways discussed which clarifies why you should use a VPN to avoid the authorities from getting access to your personal information.

VPN encrypts the traffic:

By using a VPN, you will remain protected, and the snooping eyes won’t be able to access your information. It is all because of encryption. A VPN effectively encrypts your internet traffic by using a combination of constant and robust connections with encryption protocols to make virtual P2P networks. It means that if the snooping eyes want to interrupt any of your communication or data so, they can’t access the data due to strong encryption.

VPN hides your location:

Although this point has nothing to do with the current bill, if such a thing happens in the future so, you can know how to combat it, using a VPN means that you can hide your location and can bypass the government filters. When you use a VPN, your real IP address is substituted by the IP address provided by the VPN provider and your ISP is unable to identify you.

Your ISP can’t trace you:

Connecting to a VPN server means that no one can trace you expect for your VPN provider. All the internet traffic is strongly encrypted in a way that your ISP can’t locate you. Your ISP can only view the channel of encrypted data traveling between the system and the VPN server. Thus, when the ISP is unable to trace and recognize you then how it is possible that higher authorities can do so. If authorities want to access to user’s information so, they first contact the ISP, and when ISP fails, so it means that you are on the safe side.

VPN protects you from snooping eyes:

Using a VPN means that your online privacy is secured and no one can catch you by anyway. VPN service effectively protects its user. It mixes and encrypts the data making it extremely difficult for anyone to get access to your information or even online activities. A VPN offers a tunnel into which the data goes. The tunnel is unable to break, and you along with your internet traffic become invisible. The traffic includes communication, email history, messages, download history, login data, and details of the website visited.

VPN provides protection against ISPs:

The authorities after accessing your information want to see your online activities, but you can stop them from doing so by using a VPN. A VPN prevents your ISP and other snooping eyes from doing any such thing. Some VPNs uses the best VPN protocols to protect and encrypt the user’s data when you visit different websites so they are added on those sites and the data you send and receive becomes encrypted making it difficult for the ISPs to see that you are using a VPN.

So what’s next?

After having complete knowledge of how you can prevent authorities from accessing your data you might be worried and confused regarding the choice of VPN you should use.

Well! It is indeed a difficult thing to decide which VPN to use and which not as not all VPNs provide the same level of performance.

To solve this confusion, you can check your VPN performance in different ways. There are four different ways by which you can check your VPN performance. It can either be a DNS leak test, encryption test, IP leak test, and Torrent IP test. By these test, you can satisfy yourself that either your VPN is performing well or not.

But before this, you must choose a VPN service. Well, this is not much difficult thing. You can check VPNs which offer free trails and can use them. If your needs are satisfied during the trial period, then you can continue using it. Otherwise, you can opt for the next option.

Final Thoughts:

The government rule is always against what the people wanted. They do violate general people rights. It’s not only Thailand who has adopted such regulations to access too user’s data, but there are also other countries too in this list.

What is essential is the user’s online privacy. It is the right of the user to protect and safeguard their online privacy. To do so there are many different ways, but the best is to use a reliable VPN. People must use a VPN if they don’t want anyone to interrupt their online privacy.

So, what are waiting for? Get a reliable VPN service and enjoy safe, secure, and anonymous internet surfing.

Farwa Sajjad

Farwa has done her Bachelors in Mass Communication and Masters in Electronic and Broadcasting Media. She is a passionate Journalist and likes to write about internet privacy issues.