Browser Extensions
Browsers alone can protect you from most harmful situations on the web, but with browser extensions the experience can be enhanced.
Before reading the rest, please do yourself a favor and test your browser for privacy on the following link. We expect that you will be negatively surprised by the result.
We will recommend a series of extensions that will increase your privacy. They can work with one another, so feel free to experiment and combine them.
A word of caution: too many of these extensions can lead to some sites breaking or displaying badly. It can mean either of two things – settings on extensions are too extreme and/or the site is tracking you way more than it is reasonable.
- Ghostery – ad blocking, tracker blocking
- Get as Firefox Add-on | Get on Chrome Store
- uBlock Origin – ad blocking
- Get as Firefox Add-on | Get on Chrome Store
- HTTPS Everywhere – Upgrades every link from http to https
- Get as Firefox Add-on | Get on Chrome Store
- Privacy Badger – tracker blocking
- Get as Firefox Add-on | Get on Chrome Store
- Privacy Possum – tracker blocking
- Get as Firefox Add-on | Get on Chrome Store
- Decentraleyes – cdn tracking blocking
- Get as Firefox Add-on | Get on Chrome Store
- Click&Clean – cleaning history (needed on most Chromium-based browsers)
- Get on Chrome Store
- DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials – checking a site and issuing warning if site is problematic in some way
- Get as Firefox Add-on | Get on Chrome Store
Avoid using: Adblock, Adblock Plus as they have a bad history with privacy.
Search Engine
This is a difficult topic as most people are so dependent on Google that most are completely unaware of the existence of the alternatives. We would not recommend not using Google, but we suggest trying DuckDuckGo and switching back to Google if you cannot find what you are looking for. DuckDuckGo advertises as a completely private search engine, and it will not record any of your queries. [4]
Device Fingerprint
One thing that we need to discuss is called Device Fingerprint. It is a collection of information regarding your operating system, monitor resolution, color depth, browser, installed extensions and the list goes on.
The reason for mentioning Device Fingerprint is simple: even if you manage to depersonalize usage of your internet service, your device will still give away your fingerprint and companies can use that to track you, even if you are not logged in anywhere. Now, taking certain precautions, as we mentioned earlier, will reduce the chance of successful identification, however, that is the best you can do. The only truly safe way is not using the internet at all, and we can all agree that it is impossible to do so.