Protect your privacy online with these data-guarding browser extensions

We all know that Facebook and other companies collect our data. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. From shopping sites to social networks, web trackers for various websites will track your online activities and they will track you as long as you are active on the internet. These advertisers and others collect data about our habits—and then sell it.

The universality of this behavior may make protecting your privacy seem like an impossible task. But, help is right in front of you: many browser extensions warn you of web trackers, preventing them from tracking your activity on the internet and giving you overall control over your data. We picked five of the best add-ons to fight the network tracker.

1. Facebook Container Extension

Facebook isn't the only website that loses user data, but it's undoubtedly the biggest player in the social networking space - and it's very passionate about monitoring your activity. Even if you are not on the Facebook site itself, web plugins such as the ubiquitous "like" button can track your activity.

To solve this problem, Firefox developer Mozilla released the Facebook container extension designed to...well, limit Facebook so it cannot track your activity on other websites. The personally identifiable information you use on Facebook to like photos or share articles is locked in a virtual container separated from your other network activities. This prevents social networks from viewing your activity on other sites.

The downside is that this means that tools outside of Facebook’s websites, such as embedded comments in articles or the ability to log in with your account, may not work properly. However, it's a small price to stop Facebook's tentacles from reaching out to your other web browsing activities. The only other downside is that this extension is only available for Firefox.

Facebook container extension only works with Firefox

2. Privacy Badger

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting user privacy. To achieve this, they developed an extension called Privacy Badger designed to block tracking technologies that work across multiple websites. This prevents marketers from building a comprehensive overview of your networking habits.

Many ad tracking technologies will recognize you on many unrelated websites. For example, what you searched for on Amazon will not only show up in your Amazon recommendations, but also in ads on Facebook and Twitter. Privacy Badger prevents this from happening by letting you limit the extent to which the page tracks you. For each website you visit, Privacy Badger recognizes any tracking tool and sorts it with a traffic light system that indicates how invasive each tool is. It will then automatically disable or restrict them individually.

Unfortunately, blocking certain trackers can break the functionality of the website—for example, the ability to play videos may depend on the existence of the tracker. In this case, you can choose to override the controls of Privacy Badger. Although it performs advanced blocking, Privacy Badger is very easy to use. It's also free and you can find the version in most popular browsers.

Privacy Badger is available for Chrome, Firefox and Opera

3. Ghostery

Ghostery is similar to Privacy Badger, but it provides more control over blocked content – ​​which also makes it more complicated to use. If you are willing to spend some time configuring it, Ghostery will serve you well. If you prefer the quick and concise option, you should choose Privacy Badger.

In addition to blocking ad trackers that monitor your activity across multiple websites, Ghostery can also handle code that handles website analytics, user interactions, social media plug-ins, audio and video players, comment systems, and more. Basically, it turns off thousands of potentially annoying extras loading on the top of the website if needed. When you visit a website, click the Ghostery icon in your browser to clearly understand what has been blocked and what has not been blocked. Here you can choose to enable code on the website you trust, block all content that looks suspicious, or temporarily pause the blocking feature.

These features make Ghostery hard to match in terms of comprehensiveness. Again, it is free and works for most browsers.

Ghostery is available for Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Edge and Safari

4. Disconnect

Based on its introductory publicity, Disconnect can help you “reject a lot of trackers that collect your online activities and disrupt the performance of your device.” Like Privacy Badger and Ghostery, it sniffs tracking technologies in the websites you visit and makes sure they can't monitor your activity.

You can use a lot of fine-grained controls to block or unblock these annoying things. For example, you can block Facebook from monitoring your activity, but allow Twitter to collect this information. When you visit a website, click the browser's Disconnect button to see what is blocking and how it affects the website speed. The same view allows you to whitelist certain websites and trackers.

Although the interface of this extension is our least favorite, it is undoubtedly effective, and it can handle social plugins, web analytics code, and ad trackers. It's free for computers, but if you want to use it on your mobile browser, you'll have to pay a one-time fee of $25.

Disconnect is available for Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari

5. DuckDuckGo

You may know that DuckDuckGo is an anti-Google search engine that does not track or record your queries. The same people also offer a browser extension, Privacy Essentials, which prevents advertisers and social networks from tracking you on the web. Of all the extensions on this list, it's the easiest to use: you don't need to spend time configuring it, as DuckDuckGo makes the choice for you to block the tracker.

A nice feature of this extension is to provide privacy ratings for every website you visit, so you can see who is leveling the competition when it comes to data collection. Additionally, it automatically directs you to the encrypted (HTTPS) version of the website, which makes it harder for hackers to intercept the data passed between you and the website. This will improve the security and security of your online browsing.

In addition to your computer, DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials can also be used with a web browser on your phone. So it will extend data protection to your Android or iOS device for free.

DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials for Chrome, Firefox and Safari

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