Virtualization: Three big reasons how Virtual Machines can help to improve your privacy

Basically, it is like the Inception movie with computers. You have emulated software computers called Virtual Machines running on a physical computer. And you can even have Virtual Machines running within Virtual machines if you want to (but this will require a more powerful laptop in some cases).

Each Virtual Machine is a sandbox. Remember the reasons for using them are to prevent the following risks:

1. Mitigate local data leaks and easier clean-up in case of risk (everything is contained within the VM and only the VM identifiers could be leaked and not the Host Hardware identifiers)
2. Reduce malware/exploit attack surfaces (if your VM is compromised, the adversary still must figure out he is in a VM and then gain access to the Host OS which is not so trivial).
3. Mitigate online data leaks by being able to enforce strict network rules on Virtual Machines for accessing the network (such as passing through the Tor Network).

Source: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Online Anonymity, written by AnonyPla © CC BY-NC 4.0