Your web browser knows a lot about you. Here’s what you can do about it.
Popular Science...
We’re all aware that we’re being tracked when online. It’s the reason that if you spend five minutes searching for garden furniture online, adverts for garden furniture will follow you around the web for at least the next month.
However, when it comes to the sheer amount of information you give up every time you connect to the web, you may not have realized the seriousness of the situation. Websites and web apps instantly get a slew of data reported about your device and the way it’s configured the instant you load them up, which can be used to identify you even if you don’t sign in anywhere.
The Since You Arrived website pulls the curtain back on this tracking, so you can see exactly what’s being reported and what it reveals about you—and visiting it is a must if you have any interest in your online privacy.
Find out what your browser logs
Open up the Since You Arrived portal and you’ll see five sections, from left to right, all revealing something different about you and the device you’re browsing on. It’s not necessarily the case that every site or app you visit is logging all of this information, but it is available to be logged and used to identify you.
The site is split up into sections called volumes, and the most pertinent one when it comes to online privacy is Volume IV. Everything your browser knows about you will slowly be revealed, and you can scroll down the page for more—this list of information starts with your location (as reported by your internet service provider), and the browser software you’re using.
There’s some useful technical knowledge included in the rundown as well. Did you know, for example, your device will typically report your current timezone before a webpage has finished loading? Other bits of data you’re most likely giving up will include your system’s graphics processor, how much battery life your device has, the website you visited prior to this one, and how long you spend on the page.
Many of the details you’ll see here are very particular. “Your screen is 1470 by 956 pixels, rendered at 2x density—which means it is almost certainly a recent, high-end display,” the page told me. “Your device volunteered all of this in the first milliseconds of the connection. It will do this again on the next page you visit, and the one after that.”
The other parts of the Since You Arrived site are well worth exploring as well. Volume I gives you a flurry of metrics in real time, including births, deaths, songs streamed, questions asked of AI, and hands held, while Volume II tells you about last night’s sunset in your part of the world.
Volume III shares details of a scientific discovery near your current location—I got the trilobites known as Lotagnostus—and Volume V finds the point on Earth furthest from you and anyone else currently on the Since You Arrived site.
How to protect your privacy
Websites can use combinations of these data points to figure out that you’re the same person as you move from page to page, without you having to type your name in or log into any accounts. However, while it’s impossible to stop this data collection entirely, there are ways you can limit it.
One recommended option is to install a VPN. These programs don’t make you anonymous on the internet, but they do hide your true location and time zone, besides offering a host of other security and privacy benefits, so those are two bits of information that browsers won’t have about you—though to really thwart fingerprinting, you need to change your spoofed location pretty regularly.
You can also think about changing your web browser. Mozilla Firefox takes a particularly strict stance against data tracking for example: It has specific anti-fingerprinting tech built in, so will hide certain bits of information from sites and randomize other bits, making it much harder for anyone to work out who you are.
If you want to go as full on as possible when it comes to online privacy, consider the Tor Browser. It has even more fingerprinting protections than Firefox has—including generalizing and obfuscating the data reported to websites—and it connects to the web using a series of nodes that further conceal who you are and where you are (even more effectively than a VPN does, at the expense of some speed).
Using your browser’s incognito mode wherever possible helps too, as it restricts what websites can remember and log about you on your own device—although there are limits to the privacy protections that incognito mode can provide, it’s better than nothing. The Tor Browser doesn’t have an incognito mode by the way, because it’s essentially running in a similar state all the time.
There are a host of other steps you can take in terms of settings within individual apps, platforms, and programs too: When it comes to Google, for example, you can limit ad personalization and delete your Google activity—though this is more about privacy in general than limiting what websites will know about you as soon as you visit them.
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