How to browse the internet anonymously
Browsing privately ensures that no one spies on what you do online. Thanks to the tech growth that the world has experienced over the years, you either choose to browse the entire web anonymously or if you only need to hide from specific spies, you can opt to make all of your visits to a single website anonymous.
Without this anonymity, anyone who chooses to stalk you will easily do so by closely watching your browsing habits on a daily basis. The spy can be any person or entity, from your partner, parent, a business rival, or even the government. If you doubt that, use a VPN today and you will be amazed by how many private servers you can access without consent.
What are the benefits of browsing anonymously?
If you are like many people, you definitely don’t appreciate it when others invade your privacy unannounced. So, the primary benefit of browsing anonymously is to protect your privacy. From this benefit stems many other related benefits. They include:
- When searching for a new job, sometimes you browse through job advertisements using your office computer. The surest way of blocking your current employer from spying on your web searches from the company servers is to browse anonymously.
- If you have been searching for prescription drug information of late, the last thing you want is a drugs eCommerce store to track down your IP, collect your email without your consent, and start sending you spam about a new medicine. Anonymous browsing will keep them off no matter how they try to access your browser.
- Many countries have strong and restrictive web policies that you can only duck or bypass using anonymous browsing.
- It is cool to browse knowing that no one is spying on you. It gives you peace of mind.
- Maybe there are sites you visit often but would not want a family member to find out. Problem solved.
- It is common knowledge that we are all under constant surveillance by government snoops, like the FBI or NSA. How better to hide from them than to browse anonymously?
- If you are a travel enthusiast who loves searching the web for flight prices and travel destinations, travel companies might know how desperate you are to travel and decide to hike prices. Blocking them from seeing your search history is vital for your travel budget.
How can you browse the internet anonymously?
- Use VPN
Buy a VPN (a virtual private network) and protect your data from hackers, government agencies, and rogue internet service providers. VPN masks your IP address so that no surveillance can identify you through your web traffic.
- Browse in a private window
Maybe you aren’t interested in keeping hackers or government surveillance at bay, all you want is to hide critical information from your family members or colleagues who happen to have access to your browsing device. Browsing on a private window means that your search queries aren’t saved in the browser. Even if someone goes looking for them in your history, they won’t find them.
- Try DuckDuckGo
The difference between this search engine and Google or Bing is that it doesn’t sell your data to 3rd parties. In that case, you will not receive any targeted ads or be tracked through your browsing history. In addition, even when you see ads as you browse, they most probably do not carry any tracking cookies and, for what it’s worth, they are based on the immediate search queries that you have typed in recently. They aren’t based on a user profile, like what engines such as Google create for you - which you know nothing about.
- Use anonymous proxies
There are anonymous proxy servers that you can use to block spies from seeing your IP address. Every page you download on your browse first passes through a remote server, so the page administrators on the other end will not track you beyond the remote server.
- Never use public Wi-Fi
As inviting as it can be, always avoid using Wi-Fi in hotel lobbies, public vehicles, restaurants, airports, you name them. Because you can never be sure who installed the Wi-Fi and whether the establishments are fond of monitoring the traffic behind the scenes, the best thing to do is to stay safe than sorry. What’s more, it is hard to tell if the establishment has installed reliable security and privacy protocols.