Unfortunately, we have to admit that we are all under Big Brother’s watchful eye. Internet keeps every piece of information even when we don’t really want to share it. Indeed, corporations state they need detailed information about a person only to offer intuitive web surfing and optimal advertising. But you shouldn’t really trust these «hearty» care words. Close and constant attention has the other quite pragmatic side and always causes noticeable discomfort.
Today, we’d like to discuss how our own browsers spy on us, what information they collect, and how we can limit this process.
Why Do Browsers Collect Data?
When it comes to IT companies, lots of their products and services are provided for free, which seems unprofitable. Their development/maintenance costs too much for such charity. The situation is quite suspicious, but the answer is simple: they will still earn on you.
Sites, apps, and browsers collect your data, which is an ideal product for advertisers. All your actions, clicks, sites visits allow them to greatly improve ads and adjust personalized ads (and it’s significantly higher than clicks on a non-personalized advertisement). After all, it’s browsers, search services, and social networks that collect information about us and then show us ads.
As you see, browsers are collecting our data for advertising aims only. They will hardly risk reputation by selling the confidential information, but no one can guarantee your life won’t fall into hands of hackers. That’s why we need to ensure self-protection. Fortunately, the company offers a fairly wide range of privacy options.
How Do Browsers Track Us on the Web?
Google Tracking
Thanks to Google, we have such well-known products as the most popular Google Chrome browser, Android OS, the Gmail email service, Youtube video hosting, and so on. It is almost impossible to give up these products and thereby get rid of tracking. And sometimes you want to get rid of it very much, because the company tracks the location of your devices, records the history of search queries, video views on Youtube, Google application history.
The situation is further complicated by the fact that once someone got access to any of your accounts, he/she can get access to almost all other Google products. And this is how the corporation learns private info about people’s life and preferences – what they’re looking for on the Internet, what videos they like, what applications are installed on their phones. Also, add here the contact list and geolocation.
All in all, the browser composes a very accurate portrait of the user. And there will be nothing easier than to count what goods and services will almost certainly interest him.
Tracking through Browser Fingerprints
Any site can get a lot of data about the browser and the device on which it is running. As a rule, they search for program version, time zone, installed fonts, plugins, languages, and dozens of other settings. While each of these details doesn’t make you stand out from the crowd, collectively, they often create a unique “digital fingerprint” of the device. That’s your browser fingerprint.
Go to Browserprint.info, Device Info, AmIUnique, or any similar website, and you will see how unique your computer and browser are, i.e., how easy it is to track it, among other visitors.
Each user gets a unique identifier, and further information about him is collected throughout the Internet. This is what data brokers do: they hunt for, store, buy and sell information about user profiles. Your portfolio may be more like a draft, but profiles often contain many details, especially if the person is active on the Internet.
However, except for Internet surveillance, digital fingerprints serve for other tasks. For example, bank sites can use them for additional protection. If the user has always logged in through Safari on macOS when trying to log in through Firefox on Windows, you will be prompted to enter your username and password again, just in case.
But even with all the pros, how can we avoid such type of browser spying? Firstly, we’d recommend using the latest versions of browsers. Chrome, Firefox, Safari have announced and implemented a number of anti-surveillance features. And you can also install special Antidetect browsers that we originally developed to spoof your fingerprints. A tool like this will do everything automatically, securely, and professionally mask you staying just as user-friendly and simple as common browsers. Antidetect browsers suit even inexperienced users, which is a huge pro.
Tracking by Social Networks
Any social network (especially worldwide ones like Facebook) tracks hundreds of types of personal data: location, age, gender, level and field of education, ethnicity, income and net worth, housing size and family composition, interests and hobbies.
At the same time, it is impossible to completely prohibit the company from keeping records and processing user data. After all, in social nets, we are almost dying to throw out our personal info. In addition, many people use their accounts to log into third-party sites. The company remembers this information and uses it to concretize the user’s portrait.
Here, we can give only one efficient tip – if you want a social net to know as little about you as possible, you need to tell it about yourself as little as possible.
Cookies Tracking
Users are not only monitored by large Internet companies described above. Even ordinary online stores do not mind learning more about users to offer them later more suitable products. And in such cases, cookies act as the means of information collecting.
According to the primary idea, cookies were a good, not a danger. They help sites identify visitors and remember their behavior and actions. For example, this would come in handy in online stores, and the system will not forget what products were added to the cart.
But in a similar way, sites remember other information about the user. Also, cookies may not belong to the site you visit but to a third-party advertising network to which it is connected. Such cookies allow collecting rather detailed information about the user since one advertising network may host dozens and hundreds of sites.
Experts recommend disabling cookies. However, complete cookies disabling may lead to improper site work (for example, it will be impossible to log into the account of any Internet service).
Tracking through Web Providers
Every time you go online, your Internet provider issues your device (computer, smartphone, tablet) with a unique address or an IP address. It can be individual or shared by several devices at once. But the main thing is that IP is the shortest way to the real world. If one knows your IP, he will soon determine your physical address, passport data, bank account numbers, and so on.
Technically, providers are capable of viewing everything that you transmit over the Internet in unencrypted form. That is why it is worth using sites with a secure connection or activate additional VPN protection. VPN is an intermediary that provides the same Internet access via an encrypted communication channel to protect against external attention.
Conclusion
We’ve looked through several main spy tools and managed to find only one 100% efficient way to avoid tracking. If you want to protect yourself from web spying completely, you’ll have to stop using the Internet and smart devices at all. Evidently, such a radical method seems to be impossible in modern living conditions.
Still, it’s quite possible to limit other people’s curiosity and browser’s data collection algorithms. Just use Antidetect browsers, privacy settings in accounts, disable third-party cookies, install VPN and antiviruses. At least, it will greatly help get rid of too intrusive web surveillance.
