Web browser privacy
When you visit a website in your browser, you might be wondering what information that website owner now knows about you? This article will help you understand web browser privacy, tools to test your current configuration, and a solution to protect your privacy.
Your browser sends a lot of information to every website you visit. You can see what information your browser is sending right now, by trying the IP Check tool. As you can see, that’s a lot of information! Say you’ve ever entered your name, password, or email address on a website for example, when that website owner logs your information with the information your browser sends, they can have a pretty good idea when you visit again, sending the same browser information, it’s you. Your browser information can be exchanged with other website owners once once of them has it.
You can see how unique and trackable your browser footprint is, compared to others, by trying EFF’s Panoptoclick. This is important to know, as any time you give away personal information using this fingerprint, it can be used to identify you later on as well. One way to combat this, is to minimize browser plugins, extensions, and fonts, which can be very privacy invasive. A good browser to help resolve this is called the tor browser. Download it and give the same tools above a try when using it. You’ll see it masks your IP address, and hides a lot of your personally identifiable information. Even if you fill out a form when using tor, the next time you go back to that page, using tor, you’ll likely be going through a different exit node, which means they’ll think you’re coming from a different location altogether, likely even a different country.
Need this translated for your organization? PrivaSecTech offers confidential briefings, policy reviews, workshops, and privacy/security advisory for teams that need to decide what to do next.
