Achieving Anonymity: Securing Your Browsing Habits

to stay secure, you dont just need Tor, and a VPN. You need good browsing habits.

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What are Browsing Habits?

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Let me tell explain. Its basically how you behave on the internet, what websites you click, your language pattern (how you speak), what websites you are registered to, pretty much anything that is used to identifying you, and how you behave towards those things. And thats where cookies come in and what not.

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How Do I Ensure My Browsing Habits Are Secure?

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Practice. And theres no other way to put it, other than you need to practice.

Staying Away from Malware:
Believe it or not, this is apart of browsing habits, you need to know how to stay away from malware, especially if you want to have good browsing habits.
This includes

1. Dont click on suspicious links
2. dont download unrecognizable software
3. stay away from potential danger websites
4. installing a good anti virus software
5. keeping your firewall up to date along with your AV
6. dont accept files from unknown sources or people you dont know.
7. and so on and so on

Just the basic steps that any average PC user knows how to. There are of course advanced precautions if you ask me, that I personally use. for example, if you are very paranoid you can take any of these to use.

1. make sure 'S' is included in the URL. (HTTPS)


1. Dont type in your password on unencrypted websites, as it will be left in clear text for any curious hacker to see.


1. Use a different password for all your accounts.


1. Use a different email for all your accounts


1. Use different language patterns


1. Make sure people doesnt get an idea of your timezone.

All of these are very advanced in my opinion, and are very good to use if you are a hacker that has potential enemies, i.e (black hat) or just dont want all your data on the internet. I can name many more, but I dont think you will need more.

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Installing Extensions:

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You need to install extensions to your browser, which is a MUST. Of course depending on your level of paranoia. Me personally, I am at the very top level of paranoia, and therefore use a bunch of extensions, that keep as much of my data secret as possible.
To use these extensions you need to also get familiar with them, and understand what they do, and why they do it. I will list a few below.

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  • Web of Trust: It provides a small circle next to the website before you click it with one of 3 colours. green; being a reliable source. orange, being reliable in some way or another. and red; being visit at your own risk. Of course, it doesnt mean you cant visit the website just because the circle is orange or red, but it just tells you that Web of Trust has deteced some sort of virus that could link to you in one way or another by visiting that website.

  • uBlock: It is exactly what you think it is, it block ads, and we all know it from our old friend AdBlock and AdBlock Plus. Think of uBlock as their older brother, because thats what he is.

  • Next up is Privacy Badger, one of my favorites. Badger tells you how many trackers and cookies are on a website, and shows you the potential danger of those trackers and cookies again in 3 differnet colours, green orange and red. You can choose to block the cookie by dragging the present color to the left (red) and the cookie wont be able to track you.

  • The last extension I will introduce to you is HTTPS Everywhere. It is just what it appear to be. It provides HTTPS encryption on all sites that is available to HTTPS. This means that you are safe from Man in the Middle Attacks, and SSlStripiing.

Conclusion:

So browsing habits are ways companies and websites try and identify you online, and by installing extensions and dont use the same pattern in general, you thereby achieve this ability to not get identified by websites.

11 Likes

Great post! I think this is something very important to understand since most people think that using Tor or a VPN will is enough to protect their privacy. Personally, I use the following extensions:

  • Disable WebRTC

  • Disconnect

  • HTTPS Everywhere

  • uBlock Origin

  • ZenMate Security, Privacy & Unblock VPN

  • NoScript Security Suite (Occasionally)

  • Decentraleyes

Regarding Privacy & Security settings (in Firefox):

  • Disable browising history

  • Never accept Third-Party Cookies

  • Always use private navigation

  • Never memorize credentials

As for Search Engines, I tend to use either DuckDuckGo or Disconnect.me (though there are many other search engines that don’t track or keep logs like StartPage or Ixquick)

If you want a full anonymity test on your browser, follow this link:

http://ip-check.info

2 Likes

Man, I know privacy is important, but I can’t stop using Google.

2 Likes

Yeah, I won’t deny that Google is an AMAZING search engine (probably the best), but after watching some documentaries and reading some articles on how Google tracks you and the information they collect (and then share) on you, I opted on other options. By the way, Disconnect filters your search queries through Google and other (more common) search engines. It’s a great tool that I definetly recommend checking out!

https://disconnect.me/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBxP-TEqJCg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lvem1Z66C7Q

2 Likes

I’ve found DuckDuckGo is pretty good, or ddg.gg for short.

3 Likes

I changed to DDG because, at the moment, Disconnect’s feature to filter reaults through Google is not available. Also, if you use Tor, Disconnect is the default search engine…

1 Like

If you check and enable uBlock’s 3rd party filters, you can achieve the same end-result as combining uBlock with PrivacyBadger/Disconnect/Ghostery, etc.

Trade-off is resources vs. control.
(You’ll use less resources on lower-end hw, although the res usage of uBlock wil rise slightly with each filter which is enabled, but you can’t easily control enabling of trackers if you need to.)

  • It can protect WebRTC leaks
  • has an anonymous/paranoia set of advanced settings/features
  • You won’t get collisions in blocks/actions between extensions

But I haven’t seen DNS mentioned in this thread - don’t forget to secure your resolves when using any type of connection.
(Lookup: DNSSEC, DNSCrypt, 0log DNS servers and DNS leaks)

For everyone who likes google but still wants to stop using it: Startpage.com

It sends search queries through a proxy and tunnels the answer back through it. Google can still collect data, but it doesn’t get to link it with anyone’s identity.

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