“Private” Browsing: Fact or Fiction?

Privacy Protection within Your Browser

​You’ve probably heard the old adage, “If the product is free, you’re the product.” It’s certainly true that many free Internet browsers make their money by selling users’ personal information. Companies like Google, creators of the popular Chrome browser, sell information about you and your online habits and interests to their advertisers, and their browsers give advertisers direct access to sell you products. Enter “privacy-first” browsers which are now being offered to help consumers combat unsolicited tracking and use of personal information. But online privacy is a complicated thing, so let’s look at what different browsers can and can’t do for you.

​The first thing to know: privacy-first browsers are not the same as “private mode” available with most mainstream browsers. It also is not the same as checking the “Do Not Track” setting in your browser preferences.

Each of these privacy protections has a different purpose.

• Private or “incognito” mode is great for protecting your information when you use a shared or public computer. When you use this feature, the browser automatically erases passwords, cookies, and browser history when you end that session or close that window, keeping other users from seeing your browsing history and gaining access any passwords that would be saved. It does not, however, keep your Internet service provider or the visited websites from gathering information about you.
• Selecting the “Do Not Track” privacy feature in your preferences tells web sites that you don’t want them to gather data on you. Unfortunately, this setting relies on the websites to comply, and a recent Intego article revealed that Apple is considering removing the feature from Safari because online businesses routinely ignore it.
• A privacy-first browser should actually provide some protection to keep websites from tracking your information and activities. For example, the Mozilla FireFox browser attempts to prevent websites from gathering your browsing history. The DuckDuckGo search engine doesn’t collect or share your search history or your personal information, and the Opera browser lets you connect via a kind of virtual private network (VPN) that helps to keep others from tracking your online activities.

​Given all these options, how should you protect yourself? First, always use the “private” mode when using a shared or public computer, and be sure to close that browser window or session when you leave that computer. This feature isn’t recommended when using your own computer: It doesn’t protect you from tracking, and you forfeit the convenience of autofill forms and quick browsing based on your history.

​Second, turn on the Do Not Track option in your browser if there is one. Some websites still respect it, so it affords some protection.

​Third, choose the most secure browser you can. Not everyone wants to go to a specialty browser such as Iridium or Gnu IceCat, but you don’t necessarily have to. RestorePrivacy rates FireFox number one, calling it “a great all-around browser for privacy and security.”

​In the end, no browser can guarantee 100 percent privacy protection, but a browser that is designed for privacy is likely to be more secure than ones whose parent companies makes their profits from selling your personal information. So, choose wisely and if you’re still worried about security, experts say, you can always set yourself up with a VPN.