There are many ways you surfing activities can be spied upon whilst surfing the net. Some are worrying and some not so worrying. Most can be avoided with a little help. Firstly I’ll outline who can spy on you, whether you should be worried and finally what you can do to prevent spying.
Privacy from others with access to the same computer.
Most people know that when you browse the web, the url’s of the websites that you visit are stored in your browsers history. Along with this a lot of other information is cached and stored so that when you revisit the same website and the same image is required, it loads from your hard drive (much quicker) rather than downloading the same content.
This speeds things up considerably for day to day surfing and was a godsend for dialup users. Unfortunately not everyone wants the sites they have visited to be available for perusal by others with access to the same computer.
Content from the cache can be viewed easily within your browser or by using 3rd party programs such as…
Internet explorer cache viewer or / Firefox cache viewer both by Nirsoft who have other great freeware applications.
Why would I not want people to see what sites I’ve visited?
Perhaps you want to keep a gift purchase private or keep an illness a secret as well as the more obvious pron surfing hiding.
How can I hide my surfing activities?
Luckily in most browsers there is the ability to either clear your history and any offline (cached) content, or to browse privately. Browsing privately simply prevents sites from storing content on your hard drive, all the surf history and content will be deleted when you exit the browser.
Firefox has Private Browsing
Google Chrome has Incognito
Internet Explorer has InPrivate
If you want to clean all of these browsers histories with a freeware application then check out my roundup of computer cleaners in which I recommend CCleaner.
You can ask Ccleaner to not delete certain cookies from your browser if you so wish. This will keep you logged in or preserve the settings of the website you have set.
Privacy on the website you are visiting.
It is difficult to keep yourself private from the website you are visiting as you will be giving a lot of information away to them when asking for the page.
The information given away by your browser is surprisingly detailed and can be seen on Irongeek’s browser revealing site.
Obviously this isn’t a problem if you don’t mind the website knowing all this…
Should I worry about what a website can see about me?
In most instances not really. The website may need to know you have flash and JavaScript enabled so that it can serve its content to you properly. It may need to see that you are using the iphone rather than Firefox to view the page so it sends you a condensed or optimised version.
On the other hand – some people believe that too much information is given away. Cookies record how long you are on a website, which pages you look at and more. Whilst some scripts can gain information about your computer and use that info to exploit your browser and deliver malware (if you stumble onto the wrong website).
How can I surf safer and prevent leaking too much information through my browser?
There are a few ways to prevent your browser showing too much information.
1). Surf using addons that tell your browser not to leak too much info:
There are a number of apps and browser extensions that can help mask who you are on the internet and not give too much info away. If you are using Firefox then I suggest that you browse through the Privacy section of the Firefox addons site.
Some useful Firefox extensions include:
Cookie whitelist: Only allow the cookies you want.
Noscript or Yesscript: Disable or enable scripts and allow them on a website by website basis.
BetterPrivacy can protect you from flash (super) cookies.
For more addons have a look at my top ten addons.
2). Surf via a proxy.
When surfing via a proxy you are using another computer to look at the info for you and send it to you. This means you are hidden from the website and they can’t see your I.P. address as easily. There are many free web proxies out there if you simply google “free web proxy.” It might be worth reading a little more about proxies before using them as there can be security risks involved.
It is also possible to use a proxy on your computer to filter possible privacy leaks out -although you are still directly connected and giving the website your IP.
A couple of freeware programs that are able to filter what your browser allows in and out are Privoxy and Proxomitron.
Privoxy is easier to play with in my eyes and works out of the box as I like it. It’s the one I have running currently on my computer.
Proxomitron is more difficult to useI’d say but you are able to do more with it.
Both were developed with blocking adverts in mind and are very effective at doing so.
Part two (coming soon) will include:
Protecting your privacy:
- From your ISP
- From third party sites
- When using an internet cafe.
- Tor and other services
Picture by Sunside
Please let me know your thoughts on privacy in the comments..
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Brad Ney
7 months ago
A great post here Jonny.. Is there a problem concerning the CookieWhitelist plugin as many sites use cookies to store login information. I find that if I disable cookies on websites, that it won’t work properly.
Would I have to manually add each site to the “Cookie” whitelist?
Look forward to part two!
Jonny
7 months ago
Cookie whitelist can be painful at first as *some* websites don’t work such as shopping sites but a surprising amount are okay.
Yes – cookies are added on a per site basis but once you have most of your sites sorted it isn’t too bad.
Taco – Targeted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out is a simpler solution that only disables tracking from the major advertising network and allows other cookies to operate. It does this by setting the companies own cookies.
If it’s only advertising companies tracking that you’re bothered with perhaps then Taco may be a solution.
Taco – http://taco.dubfire.net/
Part two on it’s way…
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