Glossary
This is the Glossary for Totem’s How to protect your identity online course
Anonymity: Hiding your identity so no-one knows who you really are. On the Internet you can use certain tactics to protect your identity (name, IPs, browser fingerprints, etc) from being shared with another user or third party.
Circumvention: That’s a tough one. Why don’t you dig it in with the Totem course How to bypass Internet censorship?
Data: Facts, statistics or bits of information. Everything you send across the Internet is data (names, IP address, etc).
Device: Electronic equipment like a computer, laptop or mobile phone.
Encryption: Technology that scrambles your data so that it makes no sense to anyone but those who it is meant for. It can be used to protect files on your device or in the cloud or to protect your data in transit as it travels across the Internet.
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP): A set of rules that allows you to surf the Internet. These rules allow communication between different systems. Often used to transfer data from a server to a browser to view web pages.
Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS): Another set of rules - these use a SSL certificate to create a secure encrypted connection between the server and the browser.
Intermediaries: All the parties that allow us to establish a connection to the Internet. These are the people who own the telecommunications infrastructure. They include (though are not limited to) governments, phone companies and Internet service providers (or ISPs).
Internet Protocol (IP): The way in which data is sent from one computer to another over the Internet. Each computer (known as a node, as opposed to a nerd) on the Internet has at least one IP address that is unique to the Internet.
Internet Protocol address (IP address): Everything that is connected to the Internet has an IP address (like 213.108.108.217). Otherwise, the Internet doesn’t know where to find websites or information for you.
Mail provider: A company that provides email hosting so that servers can send, receive, accept and store email (like Gmail, ProtonMail, etc).
Metadata: This is a tricky one! This is data that describes other data -- such as the origin, structure or characteristics of computer files, web pages, databases or other digital resources. Think of it like this: if data is the content of your email (the text), metadata is the identity of the sender and receiver, the email addresses, the time and place it was sent, etc. Metadata can be much more revealing than data, especially when collected in large quantities.
Modem: A modem is a very important piece of hardware that allows a computer to send and receive data through a telephone line or cable connection. In simple words, it’s the thing that connects a computer to the Internet.
Obfuscation: When you obfuscate something you are trying to hide its true purpose, like when you put on a disguise to hide your identity. Which is what you are doing to your Internet traffic when you obfuscate it with a VPN or Tor Browser.
Online service providers: These are all the companies that provide Internet-based services such as websites, payment services, news sites, online resellers and webshops, social media platforms, search engines and the companies that host our data in the cloud.
Plug-in: Also called Add-on (on Firefox) and Extensions (on Chrome), this is a small piece of software that you can add to your browser to do a specific function. For example, ad blockers, translator, screen capture function.
Privacy: When information about you is kept offline and not shared with the public.
Protocol: This is just a posh word for a set of established rules that dictates how to format, transmit and receive data so network devices - such as servers and routers - can communicate even if there are differences in their underlying infrastructures and designs.
Router: A Wifi or a wireless router is a device that is used to provide access to the Internet or a private computer network.
Server: A server is exactly that - a computer that serves information to other computers, a bit like a waiter that serves food. For example, a website is hosted on a server. A server is a vital piece of Internet infrastructure.
Software: Rather obviously, software is anything that is not hardware but is used with hardware, such as computer programs.
Third-party sites: Any party other than the two parties (for example you and the Totem website) engaged in an exchange of communication. A third party site could be a payment option within a website (PayPal, your bank) but also websites who buy your data from the site you are visiting. But we don’t do that at Totem: https://totem-project.org/privacy.html
Tor Browser: A type of web browser (a bit like Chrome, Firefox, or Safari) with a specific feature that bounces communication through computers in other countries to obscure your identity and activity.
Transport Layer Security (TLS): A cryptographic protocol that provides communications security over a computer network to establish an encrypted link between a server and a browser. HTTP + TLS = HTTPS.
User: Rather obviously this is a person who uses a computer, smartphone, app, online service or platform.
Virtual Private Network (VPN): This is a way to set up a protected private network connection when using public networks. It allows users to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if their devices were directly connected to the private network.
Wifi: The wireless technology that provides high-speed Internet and network connection.