5 Tips to Help You Be More Anonymous Online

Privacy, anonymity, and data security are all becoming bigger issues in the minds of the everyday web browser. And while it can be quite hard to remain 100% anonymous when browsing the web, there is a lot you can do to reduce how big of a digital footprint you leave behind, and how many people have access to your information. Here are some tips that can help you be more anonymous.

1 - Switch to a privacy-focused browser

Let's start with one of the most important tools of the digital world: your web browser. Browsers play a big role in how advertisers can collect your data and keep track of your movements as you go around the web. This is mostly used to provide you with personalized ads, and this exchange of personal information is the primary way in which browsers make money.

You can generally reduce how much information your browser collects and shares by tweaking your privacy settings. Firefox, Chrome, and Safari all give the users some options that can boost their anonymity, with Firefox and Safari both being backed up by companies that place great value on user privacy. You can also switch to a browser that was built to be privacy-focused. Brave, Dooble, and I2P all pack a large number of privacy options.

2 - Use Tor

This point deserves its topic. Tor is the most private browser there is, and though it is famous as a method to access the deep web, it can be used to browse regular sites anonymously as well. However, Tor also slows down your internet and won't work well for some use cases, so it's probably best used as a second browser. The one you use when you want to be extra safe when searching or doing something.

3 - Look for zero-knowledge services

Most email platforms, cloud service providers, and cloud storage providers permit themselves to look at your data in their terms of service, and they can keep all sorts of information regarding who you are and your web use habits. All of which can and often are sold to — you guessed it — advertisers. So how can you get around this?

The solution here is to look for zero-knowledge service providers. These are platforms and software solutions that take a pledge not to keep any data on their users, and that use strong encryption to make sure they wouldn't be able to access said data even if they wanted to.

4 - Use a VPN

There is a discussion on whether or not a VPN can help you stay anonymous. The truth is that it can help if you pick the right provider. That's because a traditional VPN gains access to all the information that your Internet Service Provider usually has access to, meaning installing a VPN doesn't change how much information is generated, just where it ends up.

Peer-to-peer VPN networks seek to solve this problem by taking a decentralized approach. It's technologically impossible for a decentralized VPN to store logs of your browsing data, which means there's nothing for government agencies or cybercriminals to get their hands on.

But even using a traditional VPN can still make you more anonymous if your VPN doesn't store or share your data. The problem is that it's hard for regular users to make sure their VPN is sticking to that promise.

5 - Delete old apps

Free apps generally make money by showing you ads and selling your data. And while both Apple and — to a lesser extent — Google do their best to make sure apps don't collect too much data, it's still safer to just delete apps you are not using regularly. And to constantly check your permissions to make sure no app has more permissions than it needs.

(Devdiscourse's journalists were not involved in the production of this article. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of Devdiscourse and Devdiscourse does not claim any responsibility for the same.)