These 6 browser extensions will protect your privacy online
The internet is not a private place. Ads try to learn as much about you to sell your information to the highest bidder. Emails know when you open them and which links you click. And some of the biggest internet snoops, like Facebook and Amazon, follow you from site to site as you browse the web.
But it doesn’t have to be like that. We’ve tried and tested six browser extensions that will immediately improve your privacy online by blocking most of the invisible ads and trackers.
These extensions won’t block every kind of snooping, but they will vastly reduce your exposure to most of the efforts to track your internet activity. You might not care that advertisers collect your data to learn your tastes and interests to serve you targeted ads. But you might care that these ad giants can see which medical conditions you’re looking up and what private purchases you’re making.
Alexander: Trying to stop the invasion of the web trackers [Star Tribune]
Q: I try to keep my Windows 10 PC free of unwanted software by running PC security (Malwarebytes) and cleaning (CCleaner) programs on my Windows 10 PC. I also use the DuckDuckGo search engine that doesn’t create profiles of its users.
Yet when I log into my Gmail account, my PC acquires about 200 to 300 web trackers (a type of software that monitors your online activity) that I have to remove using CCleaner. If I log into Facebook, I get another 300 to 400 trackers. If I spend a couple of hours online, I can accumulate 20,000 or more trackers, which is far more than my old Windows 7 PC gets. Why does Windows 10 attract more tracking software, and what can I do to maintain my privacy?
Copy shortlink:
Q: I try to keep my Windows 10 PC free of unwanted software by running PC security (Malwarebytes) and cleaning (CCleaner) programs on my Windows 10 PC. I also use the DuckDuckGo search engine that doesn t create profiles of its users.
Yet when I log into my Gmail account, my PC acquires about 200 to 300 web trackers (a type of software that monitors your online activity) that I have to remove using CCleaner. If I log into Facebook, I get another 300 to 400 trackers. If I spend a couple of hours online, I can accumulate 20,000 or more trackers, which is far more than my old Windows 7 PC gets. Why does Windows 10 attract more tracking software, and what can I do to maintain my privacy?
“Doxxing” is an eerie, cyber-sounding term that gets thrown around more and more these days, but what exactly does it mean? Simply put, it’s when a person or other entity exposes information about you, publicly available or secret, for the purpose of causing harm. It might be information you intended to keep secret, like your personal address or legal name. Often it is publicly available data that can be readily found online with just a bit of digging, like your phone number or workplace address.
By itself, being doxxed can be dangerous, as it may reveal information about you that could harm you if it were publicly known. More often it is used to escalate to greater harm such as mass online harassment, in-person violence, or targeting other members of your community. Your political beliefs or status as a member of a marginalized community can amplify these threats.
Google Analytics internet tracking
These are described in detail in an online article (How we built a real-time privacy inspector), and I briefly discuss them below.
So, let s name names. The table at the bottom of this post presents a somewhat arbitrary collection of five dozen wine-related websites. I have tried to include all of the usual suspects, supplemented by a few sites that I sometimes read myself. I apologize in advance to those of you who have been left out, or if anyone finds releasing this information embarrassing. My ultimate aim is to make wine-industry websites as clean as possible, by pointing out where the dirt has accumulated.