Computers on my musings

How to protect your privacy on a Browser

Harshal Suryawanshi — Sun, 22 Nov 2020 04:05:00 +0000

Now that we have clear understanding on what is online privacy and why do we need it, we need to figure out the how part. Before the advent of smartphone apps, browser was the only window to the vast world of Internet for a common person. Even now if you are working on a computer you most probably will use a browser to surf the net. So it is imperative to secure this window first before we go to more demanding steps.

The Easy Way

Most of the people might be using Chrome, a select few Firefox, the new kids Edge and the rich people would be using Safari as their browser. The easiest method without affecting your browsing habits is to install privacy focused extensions. I am not going to detail all the extensions that you can install and what they do since more knowledgeable people than me have already done that research. So instead of reinventing the wheel I would point you to this link. A smart person always makes an informed decision and doesn’t just do things because someone online said so. So I would recommend to read the description and user reviews for the extensions mentioned in the above link and decide which ones you want to install.

The Second Easy Way

The issue with the above method is that you need to understand what those extensions do and then make a decision about which ones you want to install. If you install all of them they might conflict with each other or degrade your browsing experience. Also the more extensions you have more will the memory that your browser consumes.

To avoid this you can use a privacy-focused browser. What that means is these browsers will be configured by default to block the trackers and other measures implemented out of the box. The only downside is you will have to install one more browser and might need to adjust your workflow to suit the new browser. Some of the privacy focused browser are mentioned in this link. You can try them all out and then keep the one which you liked.

I personally use the Tor Browser. The Internet speed definitely reduces, but it is enough for me for general browsing. When speed is of concern, like playing videos online, I switch to Firefox.

Seeing is Believing

Well we have covered how to browse the web while still maintaining our privacy, relatively speaking. There will always be some data going to back the servers of the websites you visit but at least the above methods will make it a lot more difficult for the companies to profile you and then sell that data to the advertisers or other third parties. You will be in control of your data.

But how do you see what data is getting leaked or how these companies view you data? There are some online tools available which enable you to test your privacy. I am mentioning some of them below:

When you visit a web page, your browser voluntarily sends information about its configuration, such as available fonts, browser type, and add-ons. If this combination of information is unique, it may be possible to identify and track you without using cookies. EFF created a Tool called Panopticlick to test your browser to see how unique it is. [copy pasted directly from here
You can see the IP address and your DNS Server address if you visit this link. This is fine since with all these extensions enabled, you are only controlling the tracking that the websites do and the data that is being sent by your browser. If you want to remain truly anonymous you would have to use Tor. If you use the link again in Tor, you will see a different IP address, which is actually the IP address of the exit node in the Tor Network. Below is a short video on how Tor works or if you want to know more about the Tor Project you can go here.

Browsers on your Phones

On the phone too you have the same choices available. All the Android phones will have Chrome pre-installed and most people will use it as their default browser. Same is the case with Safari on Apple products. I personally you the Tor Browser on the phone for general browsing. It is available on Play Store and App Store. For high bandwidth needs I use DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser which is also available on Play Store and App Store. It also seems faster than Google Chrome to me because of blocking ads and having less fancy features. The only thing that I miss sometime is history. DDG Browser doesn’t store your history so if you want to search for a site you visited in the past you are out of luck.

Online Privacy - Why do I need it?

Harshal Suryawanshi — Sat, 14 Nov 2020 07:09:00 +0000

The age of Internet which we live in today is truly a remarkable age to live in. The power an average person has at their fingertips today surpasses anything in humankind’s history. But as Spider-Man’s uncle Ben said - “With great power comes great responsibility”, that power has to be balanced with caution.

The Good

Everyone is aware of the great things that Internet has enabled us to achieve, from coming together to tackle some difficult problems to watching cat videos as a stress buster after a long day’s work. 😺

The Data

I recently started thinking about how much data do these companies collect about me. I think on some level everyone is aware that these tech companies collect data and we are so invested in these platforms that we don’t want to know what data they are collecting and what they are doing with it. After all ‘Ignorance is Bliss’.

I use Facebook sparingly and like most people having Android phones, I use Google products for many other things. Facebook collects data about you not only when you are on its platform but also when you are browsing the general web. Here’s a great link to know about how Facebook collects the data and how it uses it.

Google is equally, if not more, zealous about collecting your data. If you go into your Google Account Settings, in the left pane you will see sections which you can browse through. You will see that Google records almost every click on your mobile since you are always logged in to your Google account on your Android phone.

The Bad

Most of the features that these companies provide do require our data. But the problem is these companies collect other data about us even when we have not explicitly granted them permission. On top of that this data is shared between tech companies for their benefit. Case in point is the Cambridge Analytica case where this company was given access to Facebook user data without their permission. So can we really trust these companies with our data?

The whole business model of these companies is based on ads. The products offered by these companies are free because these companies don’t sell their products, they sell us, to the advertisers. That’s why you see that you click on one product in Amazon and then that product follows you all over the Internet. To know more about this you can watch The Social Dilemma docudrama film.

The Question

Before I go on to an investigative journey I would like to address the most important question that comes to mind when the online privacy topic comes up - “I am not doing anything wrong on the Internet, I have nothing to hide. So what if these companies collect my data?”

Imagine a scenario where you have a person following you, a stalker, watching your every move. This stalker knows about all your habits, about your interests, about your friends, what makes you happy, who do you like, what are your political preferences, where you live, your phone number and all other details about you that you yourself might not know. Now this person always maintains a distance from you, never interferes in your life and never interacts with you. They are just there, just watching you. Since ‘Knowledge is Power’, are you comfortable with the amount of power that this person has? Are you sure that this person will not turn out to be bad? Do you know what this person is talking about you to their friends? How do you know that this person’s friends will not use the information they got about you for bad things?

If the above paragraph made you squeamish, then you need to give a damn about what data these online platforms are collecting about you.

The Solution

There are some simple things that we can do to control what we share with these platforms. For things that are not in our control like location data that these companies collect, there are workarounds available which obfuscate or limit the data. I will be covering my experiments on data privacy in following posts. You can follow them and let me know if there are some things that you follow which I should consider.

For now, go to settings of every social media platform you use and see what all permissions you have given these companies. That is the first step towards online privacy.