Chrome Privacy Extensions Promise to Keep Your Data Safe

Dennis Snider

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If you’re concerned that Chrome as a standalone platform is not quite up to the task of keeping your data away from prying eyes, it may be time to install some simple browser extensions that can help you maintain tighter control of your privacy.

It’s no major secret that Chrome doesn’t quite cut the mustard when it comes to safeguarding your privacy, especially when it’s pitted against the offerings of Safari, Microsoft Edge, Firefox, and Brave, the novel privacy-centric browser.

However, there are some basic actions you can take to protect yourself against trackers that monitor your browsing history by making it very difficult to malicious entities to fingerprint your browser.

So, what exactly is fingerprinting?
Fingerprinting is a very sneaky approach by which advertisers keep an eye on your browsing behavior. Every time you visit a website, both your browser and your device leave behind a few pieces of information about you. When these pieces of information are combined, they generate a distinct set of characteristics that advertisers subsequently employ to track your behavior without asking for permission to do so.
Not too happy with that idea? That’s where Chrome extensions come to the rescue. Here are three fantastic extensions that will stop fingerprinting in its tracks.

1) Cookie AutoDelete (Chrome extension). As the name suggests, this handy extension will quickly and easily delete any cookies that have been placed on your computer as soon as you close any open tabs. You can whitelist any cookies you want to keep. To get AutoDelete started, you’ll need to enable the Auto-clean first, at which point you can also input the details of any cookies you want to whitelist.

2) uBlock Origin. uBlock Origin gives you significant control over what resources you do, and do not, block. In addition, it offers a range of modes and settings that allow you to opt into varying levels of blocking from literally blocking everything through to a lighter-handed approach.

3) Privacy Badger. Privacy Badger is an offering that was designed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) with the express intention of allowing you to monitor the third-party trackers that are keeping an eye on your browsing behavior without expressly seeking permission before doing so. It works in a very similar fashion to uBlock Origin; however, it has been designed to be simpler to use and enables you to control the extent to which you want to block activity. If you find that the extension is breaking a page, you can quickly and easily disable the extension.