Online Privacy
Always secure your phone. (Photo: Dan Nelson/Unsplash)

With the Internet full of Internet snoops courtesy of online platforms like Facebook and Amazon, it is a good thing there are browser extensions that help you defend against them.

Using the Internet exposes you to a variety of threats, from malicious websites to intrusive ads that seem to know your preferences. While most browsers warn users about potentially malicious websites before they even get a chance to land on the page, Internet snoops from platforms like Facebook, Amazon, and other social media platforms, analyze your data without you even knowing it. YouTube, Facebook, Amazon, and many more have algorithms embedded in their systems designed to know more about their users, and then sell this information to bidders. Fortunately, there are browser extensions that can help improve your online privacy.

   

Although these extensions might not block every type of snooping activity, they can still help minimize your exposure to the efforts of online platforms in tracking your Internet activity. When you block hidden trackers from loading, it prevents websites from collecting information about you, with the added benefit of having them load a bit faster. The downside is some of these websites might not properly load if you do not let them track you. So what are these browser extensions that can help you defend against Internet snoops that affect online privacy?

One of the best browser extensions that can help protect you against Internet snoops that impact online privacy is HTTPS Everywhere. This browser extension quickly loads websites with the HTTPS prefix and allows you to block some websites that do not support HTTPS. With this extension, you will see a little green lock on your browser telling you whether a website you visit has experienced hijacking or been modified by a hacker before it even loads. Many browsers, which include Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Edge support the extension.

Privacy Badger is another browser extension that helps users defend against Internet snoops that intrude on online privacy. Considered as among the best all-in-one browser extensions for spoiling the attempts of invisible third-party trackers on websites, it scrutinizes the components of a website and learns which among these components track you from one website to the next. It then blocks these components from loading in your browser. As the extension learns as you surf the web, its ability to track third-party trackers and blocking them get better over time.

While ads keep the Internet free, the tradeoff often is your personal information. Ads try to learn about you by examining your browsing activity and following you across the information superhighway. Using uBlock Origin, considered as one of the most effective browser extensions to help you defend against these types of Internet snoops from intruding into your online privacy is a good option. This browser extension is lightweight and simple but very effective in blocking ad elements from loading and tracking you. Like all many other browser extensions, it works in Edge, Chrome, and Firefox.