How to Search the Web Anonymously
Want to keep your web browsing more private? A good first step is looking at how you can search the web anonymously - or at least, more anonymously. #faf@31
There are plenty of practical benefits, from avoiding ads based on personal ailments and mortgage needs, that you may not want an employer or family member finding out about, to ducking everyday surveillance bygovernment snoops, like the FBI or NSA. And if you’re traveling or living in a country with strict internet censorship, it could be that you need to hide what you are searching from a totalitarian government.
Searching the web anonymously may even affect the prices you’re shown on flight prices –one Consumer Reports studysuggests some online travel agents may be changing the prices shown to browsers with a lot of searches for a particular flight.
Depending on what you want to accomplish, here are five ways to search more anonymously online.
1. Use a VPN
If you want to protect your searches from hackers, government surveillance and internet service providers, avirtual private network(VPN) is yourmust-have privacy tooltobrowse the web anonymously. This encrypts and routes your web traffic through servers belonging to the VPN provider. This masks your IP address; as well, each time you use the VPN, your IP address would change, so that searches are not aggregated into a profile that can be targeted for advertising.
Since the VPN provider itself could view your web traffic, it’s crucial to choose a "zero-logs” VPN that does not store or access your web traffic – usually, this means going for a paid-for service, which has less incentive to monetize its users.
What this does revents surveillance by your internet service provider, hackers and any other entity monitoring your web connection.
However, it’s worth noting that you can still be identified through other metrics such as your "browser fingerprint” (the specific configuration on your browser such as types of fonts and extensions).
But:This doesn’t erase searches from your browser so that anyone with access to your computer (as opposed to net connection) can still view your searches. It also doesn’t protect against logging search terms when a user is signed in - if you are logged into, say, your Outlook account on Edge, Bing can still log your searches.
Protect against targeted profiling – if someone is trying to identify you through your web traffic, aVPN servicemakes it more difficult but not impossible. For example, a hacker monitoring VPN traffic might be able to aggregate enough information about search terms made, links visited and general online behavior to build an identifying profile.
2. Use TOR browser
For a higher level of anonymity,the TOR browserencrypts and routes your web traffic – and searches – throughout a network of other TOR users, so that your search queries will appear to be originating from a variety of IP addresses (known as exit nodes). This makes your search terms extremely difficult (but not impossible!) to link to identifying information.
Searching through Google with TOR would not result in queries being linked to a specific IP address for instance, while the large number of people using TOR and its minimal featuresreduces browser fingerprinting– the ability to identify a computer based on its unique browser configuration.
What this does revents passive surveillance by the government and internet service providers, and prevents profiling by search engines.
But:This does not offer total anonymity from entities that might be actively trying to identify you – for example, searches for certain terms, locations or unique features could be used to build an identifying profile.
3. Use a Private Browsing window
If all you want to do is prevent someone with access to your computer from seeing your searches in your browser history (and you figure you won’t want or remember to clear your browser history regularly), you can open a private browsing window (or Incognito window on Chrome).
A private browsing window doesn’t save search queries to the browser, so they won’t appear in your history, nor in Google auto-complete the next time you or someone else uses your computer.
A private browsing window also logs you out of any signed-in accounts (you’ll remain signed in on other windows). For Google users, for example, this means you can stay signed into Gmail on your standard browsing window, then use Google search in an Incognito window without the searches being saved to your Google account (these searches would otherwise be used to personalize ads and other Google products).
Here’s how to open a private window:
ï‚·Chrome: Tap the three dots in the top right and select New Incognito Window.
ï‚·Edge: Tap the three horizontal dots to select New InPrivate Window
ï‚·Firefox: Tap the three horizontal lines and select New Private Window
ï‚·Safari: In the toolbar, tap File > New Private Window
What this does:Erase searches from your computer and browser, preventing someone with access to your computer from viewing your history.
But:This minimally protective measure won’t prevent search engines such as Google from linking search queries to your IP address and personalizing results based on past searches.
http://www.buyexpressvpn.net/how-to/
http://www.buyexpressvpn.net/the-disadvantages-of-ad-blockers/
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