Browsing privately ensures your online privacy is protected and also your internet security won’t be breached easily. In a nutshell, browsing privately means that you leave a minimal online footprint, third-party agencies won’t be able to track you via your online behaviors and also using other configurations that help you stay private and anonymous. Below are tips that you can use to cover your tracks and browse the internet privately;
Deal with cookies
Cookies are files that are stored on your computer by your browser when you visit certain websites. These files contain various information about your online activities, your device, and your browser. They are generally harmless and are meant to make browsing convenient and seamless. This is because they can help your browser remember visited sites and their configurations, help you log in to sites quickly and other various functions.
Cookies become dangerous when they are engineered by malicious actors or by advertising agencies to track your online behavior. In this case, you have an option of disabling them, but the results can be bad or good. In a worst-case scenario, you won’t be able to browse seamless, and you will lose other web functionality such as nothing gets saved in your cart when you go shopping and so on.
To deal with this problem, set your browser to clear cookies every time you finish browsing. You can also use incognito mode as it clears cookies automatically.
Use anti-tracking features
Popular browsers have this feature, but they offer little functionalities. To get more functionality, look for reputable plugins, add-on, and even use extensions that offer more anti-tracking functionalities. These pieces of software are easy to install and configure. They can help you block pop-ups, ads, scripts, and cookies from tracking your online behavior. Before installing any add-on, plugin or extension, check it carefully and do some research as some of them are not trustworthy and can inject malware to your device and do further damage.
Install and use a privacy-focused browser
Setting up a normal browser to be privacy-focused is tedious as you can lose some essential functionalities and feature. Also installing too many add-ons can be a security risk as well as slow down your browser or even make it crash.
The easiest way to browse privately is by either using a privacy-focused browser or using the onion router (Tor) browser.
Privacy-focused browsers are automatically set to block a wide range of trackers, erase your history and delete cookies after a browsing session, block pop-ups and ads, enforce HTTPS for web encryptions and also enables you to search privately. Other features include script blocking, third-party cookie blocking, and malware blocking.
The Tor browser offers the same functionalities of a privacy-focused browser, but it’s fine-tuned as an anonymizer as it uses the Tor network. That’s, your web browsing traffic is routed through different nodes in the Tor network to the point that the entry node doesn’t know the destination of your web traffic as well as the exit node doesn’t know the origin of your web traffic. This makes it hard for anybody to track you even when surveillance is involved.
Use a VPN – IPBurger VPN
A VPN can be used to protect your entire internet traffic or just your web traffic. A VPN uses strong encryption standards to encrypt your online traffic and tunnel it securely via a VPN server. The encryptions render your data unreadable as it scrambles it into some gibberish form. The secure tunnel is also hard to hack into but in case prying eyes manage to intercept your data; they won’t be able to read it let alone decrypt it.
This makes a VPN a suitable tool to use when surfing the internet. Due to the secure connection tunnel, you can use a VPN to protect your online traffic on public Wi-Fi hotspots, and you won’t worry about malicious actors getting their hands on your data.
Besides the encryptions, the VPN server also hides your actual IP address by assigning you a virtual IP address. This also masks your actual location with a virtual location. This combo makes you anonymous when you surf the web.
