Your browser is your portal to the World Wide Web, but it’s also how hackers, downloaders, and other malicious actors can break into your computer.
Installing security-focused browser extensions that disable pop-up ads and fully encrypt website traffic from being monitored or tracked would certainly improve your privacy—and even speed up your browser.
Below are some privacy add-ons that lend your browser extra muscle to keep you secure online: Begin with adblocker extensions that enable users to avoid annoying and harmful advertising, save bandwidth, and opt-out of invasive marketing programs.
HTTPS Everywhere
In the early days, the internet was unencrypted and risky, making for several data dumps, password leaks, security breaches, and site infections. To make things safer, a change from HTTP to HTTPS has begun. However, some of the websites have not made the requisite updates, raising the chances of being targeted.
HTTPS has three major advantages over HTTP:
- Authentication – When making a connection between you and the website, this means that you are viewing the actual website, not a phishing clone.
- Encryption – This means that the online data is encrypted as it is moved to and from. This greatly improves your privacy.
- Data integrity – This is a strategy that does not allow data to be corrupted during the move. Ensure that the data you send is the data that will be sent.
HTTPS Everywhere requires a secure upload protocol to all pages that are now running on obsolete and unsafe setups. This expansion was born out of the partnership between The Tor Project and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. This extension is fully free and downloadable for Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera.
uBlock Origin
UBlock Origin is one of the most successful and commonly deployed ad-blocking extensions. They’ve got extensions for all browsers, including Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Opera. This extension stops advertisers from having their hands on the data by introducing a variety of strategies.
This extension also allows you to set the preferences for which ads to block and which ones to view. It’s also considered to be a really lightweight and less power-draining extension that’s going to be easy on the hardware (unlike Chrome!!).
Ghostery
This is another exceptional privacy extension that hides ads, avoids trackers, and speeds up websites. Ghostery uncovers the trackers on each page and empowers you to monitor those you don’t like for a cleaner, quicker, and safer browsing experience.
Ghostery allows quicker page loads by blocking trackers to remove web pages and speed up page loads. And to make it much cooler, it’s open-source.
Cookie AutoDelete
An HTTP cookie is a tiny piece of data that is sent from a website and saved on the user’s computer by the user’s web browser while the user is browsing. Cookies have been developed to be a secure tool for websites to recall details or to monitor user browsing habits.
Cookies are saved locally as text files on the device level. Often they are called Access Tokens and are primarily used to recognize the user.
For example, when you first visit a social media website like Instagram, register and log in, Instagram will issue a cookie to you at this point. when you go to Instagram, you will be detected by a cookie that is stored locally. If the cookie is missing or corrupt, you will be prompted to log in again.
Unfortunately, cookies can also be used for monitoring purposes. When you log in to other websites such as Facebook or Gmail, the same cookies are reviewed and your online habits are tracked.
A massive leak of data on Facebook that has happened recently abused the loophole that allowed users access to cookies. This way hackers can bypass not only other people’s Facebook accounts but also any other website that needs them to sign in with the same cookie.
Online cookies are not as desirable as real-life cookies and they are used to track consumers online. Although you can still manually uninstall cookies by going to your browser preferences, why do so when you can get an AutoDelete cookie extension that manually deletes cookies that you want to get rid of? It’s that easy.
What makes this extension special is that it uses a heuristics model, which means that it doesn’t have a fixed blacklist tracker database, but thinks about it as you’re searching the site. It does not seem to work as soon as you launch it, but the more you use it, the easier it gets.
Disconnect
Disconnect is an extension that de-personalizes your browsing without cutting off the necessary features. Accessible for mobiles and desktops, Disconnect works by blocking different pieces of third-party tracking code that can damage your device or privacy. If a site requests a network to connect to something other than the site you’re viewing, it won’t be able to load the extra stuff.
When installed, you’ll find Disconnect creating a tally in the taskbar icon. As with other extensions, you can adjust the control on various sites and also enjoy quicker browsing.
DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo is best known for its encrypted search engine that doesn’t collect people’s info. In recent years, however, the business has also pushed more towards privacy controls across the internet (including the launch of its own smartphone browser). DuckDuckGo is also an extension for Chrome.
Adblock Plus
Unlike other software here, Adblock Plus is mainly advertised as an ad-blocking tool—others do not inherently block ads by nature but tend to be protection tools that may restrict the most invasive forms of ads. Using an ad blocker comes with a different range of legal considerations; it can restrict a significantly broader selection of products on the site page, and these could include advertisements that don’t follow users across the world.
Better Safe Now Than Suffer Later
Yeah, it will take a lot of time to think about and read about these privacy and security tools—but note that every minute taken is worth it. When you learn to protect your data and improve your privacy, you will know that you don’t have to let the world look into your life.