How to protect your privacy on a Browser

Now that we have clear understanding on what is online privacy and why do we need it, we need to figure out the how part. Before the advent of smartphone apps, browser was the only window to the vast world of Internet for a common person. Even now if you are working on a computer you most probably will use a browser to surf the net. So it is imperative to secure this window first before we go to more demanding steps.

The Easy Way

Most of the people might be using Chrome, a select few Firefox, the new kids Edge and the rich people would be using Safari as their browser. The easiest method without affecting your browsing habits is to install privacy focused extensions. I am not going to detail all the extensions that you can install and what they do since more knowledgeable people than me have already done that research. So instead of reinventing the wheel I would point you to this link. A smart person always makes an informed decision and doesn't just do things because someone online said so. So I would recommend to read the description and user reviews for the extensions mentioned in the above link and decide which ones you want to install.

The Second Easy Way

The issue with the above method is that you need to understand what those extensions do and then make a decision about which ones you want to install. If you install all of them they might conflict with each other or degrade your browsing experience. Also the more extensions you have more will the memory that your browser consumes.

To avoid this you can use a privacy-focused  browser. What that means is these browsers will be configured by default to block the trackers and other measures implemented out of the box. The only downside is you will have to install one more browser and might need to adjust your workflow to suit the new browser. Some of the privacy focused browser are mentioned in this link. You can try them all out and then keep the one which you liked. 

I personally use the Tor Browser. The Internet speed definitely reduces, but it is enough for me for general browsing. When speed is of concern, like playing videos online, I switch to Firefox.

 

Seeing is Believing

Well we have covered how to browse the web while still maintaining our privacy, relatively speaking. There will always be some data going to back the servers of the websites you visit but at least the above methods will make it a lot more difficult for the companies to profile you and then sell that data to the advertisers or other third parties. You will be in control of your data.

But how do you see what data is getting leaked or how these companies view you data? There are some online tools available which enable you to test your privacy. I am mentioning some of them below:

• When you visit a web page, your browser voluntarily sends information about its configuration, such as available fonts, browser type, and add-ons. If this combination of information is unique, it may be possible to identify and track you without using cookies. EFF created a Tool called Panopticlick to test your browser to see how unique it is. [copy pasted directly from here]
  
• You can see the IP address and your DNS Server address if you visit this link. This is fine since with all these extensions enabled, you are only controlling the tracking that the websites do and the data that is being sent by your browser. If you want to remain truly anonymous you would have to use Tor. If you use the link again in Tor, you will see a different IP address, which is actually the IP address of the exit node in the Tor Network. Below is a short video on how Tor works or if you want to know more about the Tor Project you can go here.   

Browsers on your Phones

On the phone too you have the same choices available. All the Android phones will have Chrome pre-installed and most people will use it as their default browser. Same is the case with Safari on Apple products. I personally you the Tor Browser on the phone for general browsing. It is available on Play Store and App Store. For high bandwidth needs I use DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser which is also available on Play Store and App Store. It also seems faster than Google Chrome to me because of blocking ads and having less fancy features. The only thing that I miss sometime is history. DDG Browser doesn't store your history so if you want to search for a site you visited in the past you are out of luck.

Homework

 I know everyone hates doing homework but don't worry this is going to be more of Funwork than Homework. I want you all to download TrackerControl Slim app on your phone which logs all the trackers from the apps that you use. You can keep this app running for a week, so that at the end of the week you will know which servers your apps connect to. You will find that even a cleaner app contacts a server which it has no need of doing since it is doing a task locally on your phone. This way you can identify the apps which are making unnecessary calls to servers or contacting severs which might be of dubious nature.

In the next blog post we will take a look on how to protect you data on the whole phone and not just the browser.