With so much things going around about NSA, Google, and PRISM, it seems protecting our online privacy has become harder than ever. Everyone is tracking us – our email provider, Internet Service Provider, Government agencies, and of course cyber criminals. At this point, it’s hard to determine which service should be used and which should be ditched.

Recently, we heard Verizon passing on the phone call records of every single one of its customers to the US National Security Agency (NSA) where an unknown federal court granted the NSA a three-month window during which Verizon is compelled to hand over daily logs of all its customer’s calls when either one or both parties are located in the United States.

Soon after that, The Guardian newspaper and the Washington Post revealed the existence of a massive, warrantless government surveillance program known as PRISM. The program is used by National Security Agency (NSA) to mine user data. PRISM gives the NSA and the FBI direct access to a vast number of online commercial services, that is capable of “extracting audio, video, photos, emails documents and connection logs” which allow investigators to build up a picture of an individual’s movements and contacts over time.

The information was given by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors.

So the question of the hour is to how to protect you identity from PRISM and NSA invasions. Not only government agencies, but safeguard your data from other data collectors like search engines and advertisers too. You’ll have to take some extreme measures, ditch your always-online, always-social habit, and many such things. I hope you understand that avoiding PRISM means avoiding those services which allegedly collaborate with the NSA, so it’s going to be a major pain in the beginning – and yet, it’s definitely possible to do.

There are few best practices to keep your personal data safe online, such as masking your IP, limiting the use of social networks, using privacy-centered email services and search tools, and of course implement some common sense before exchanging any sensitive information online.

There are few services that may help you in these endeavors. Here are some names:

The Onion Router – It is an open source, completely free-to-use, and perhaps the most common method of masking your IP address, and highly secure way of surfing the web while anonymizing your traffic. Aimed to prevent eavesdropping and traffic analysis attacks, The Onion Router allows you communicate anonymously on the Internet.

DuckDuckGo–Search engine that does not track you, doesn’t collect personal data, and does not record user information. Ready to ditch Google?

Hushmail–Pitched as email service with Built-in encryption for ultimate security, Hushmail offers PGP-encrypted e-mail, file storage, vanity domain service, and instant messaging service.