Here is a collection of resources that you might find useful to help you take more control of your online privacy.
Privacy Badger
Privacy Badger is a browser extension from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). It works with Chrome, Firefox and Edgium, but sadly does not work with Safari.
Privacy Badger detects and highlights all of the cookies in a page that may be tracking you, and then gives you the option of blocking them completely, or allowing the remote server to connect without setting cookies. It learns as you use it, so it will block cookies and servers on new sites based on your past choices.
This is slightly less aggessive than an ad blocker in that even with cookies blocked, a site can still show you ads and make money – important for ad-supported, free-to-use websites. But it makes it harder for them to stalk you as you move around the web.
Pi-hole®
As we can see with Privacy Badger above, your tool of choice may not work on all of the internet connected devices you use, and which can be used against you in the privacy wars. iPhones don’t allow you to install extensions, and internet connected TVs and other Internet-of-Things devices rarely allow any customisation at all.
If you have a Raspberry Pi (or another computer that can act as a server) lying around, you can take control of the DNS on your home network and block invasive advertising for all of the tech in your house. The Pi-hole project allows you to take over the DNS server on your home network, and all of the devices accessing the Internet on tahat network use its DNS to translate domains into IP addresses – e.g. www.bbc.co.uk → 212.58.237.252
Volunteers publish lists of advertising domains that you choose to subscribe to. When a computer on your network asks for the directions to creepy.advertisingnetwork.com, the Pi-hole directs them to 0.0.0.0, which is a blackhole. If your computer can’t talk to the creepy domain, they can’t build an intrusive ad profile based on your web browsing.
Safari and Firefox
Choosing your browser carefully can have a big impact on your privacy on the web. Whereas Google makes a lot of money out of advertising, Apple and Mozilla do not have the same conflict of interest when it comes to building privacy protecting web browsers.
Safari – being the default browser on macOS and iOS – has significant market share, so when it introduces features like Intelligent Tracking Protection (ITP), it makes a difference.
Firefox has smaller market share, but has similar powerful privacy protections built in.
Google has announced that Chrome will stop allowing 3rd party cookies from 2022. But many in the industry fear that this will mean that by controlling the most popular browser, they will have a monopoly on profiling users’ browsing habits with their Privacy Sandbox.