HOWTO: Increase your Privacy

Hello people,

today i would like to share with you a way to increase your privacy.

At first: How is our privacy decreased?

If you are browsing around the www you are leaving a lot of tracks, for example:

-Which items you clicked on a website
-What you have searched on a search engine
-Which websites you visited before
-How long you were on a website
-Your location(including the city)
-Yout internetprovider
-and a lot more

This has also some advantages, like when you search a product and it will show you at first local stores, which offer it or you want to know how the weather in your area will be, but i personally see no reason, why a very, very big social media platform should know, which tabs i have opened or that i looked for a holidaytrip in Italy.

Second: How is that done?

When you visit a website it places cookies in you pc. Cookies in generell are a good thing, because they are needed, to keep you logged in or save the language setting for a specific website.
But there are so called trackingcookies, which will track your activity and they will report your data to the website, which placed this small files on your pc. The shocking thing is, that nearly all websites this days use this trackingcookies.

Third: But what can i do against it?

My answer is: Brave.

Brave is an internetbrowser,which is based on the Opensource Version of Google Chrome, but focused to offer a high level of privacy. It will block trackingcookies and advertisments.

I will now show you how to install it and prove you the hugh amount of trackers.

Lets get started by going to the brave website and download it:

https://brave.com/features/
(I linked the feature page, because there you have additional informations about it.)

So click on "Donwload Brave" and install it like every other programm.
When it finished installing you will be greeted by the welcome screen.

Just click on "Let´s go"

In the next screen you can import your favourites from any other browser.
Optional: If you would like to do it press on "import". Otherwise click on "next".

I selected import. Now choose your browser and what you would like to import.

After it finished you will get a completed message. Just close the new tab to return to the configuration.

Now you can choose a search engine.
Just click on "Settings" and choose your desired one.

(For most privacy cou can choose DuckDuckgo, but its your decision.)
After that close the settings tab und click on "next"

Now you could change the look of Brave, if you want click on "choose your theme".
Otherwise click on "next".
I let the default.

Here are a few informations about the "Brave Shield". Click on "next" to continue.

Now you will be asked, if you would like to enable rewards.
I just went on and clicked on "Done"
If you would like to, then click on "Enable Rewards"

Now you are in the homescreen, where are the informations, which will show you how Brave protected your privacy.
(Another good thing is, that it will force https everywhere, which means, that all your connections to a website are encrypted. This will prevent, that the transfered data between you and the website can be analyzed by someone who it catching your traffic.)

After that i searched on google and visited CoinMarketCap .

Then i opened a new tab, which will open the startpage and you can see, that 18 Trackers and 7 Ads were blocked... only by visiting two websites.

If cou click on the Brave icon, then you will see some informations and can disable the Shield. (Only usefull, when you encounter problems on a website.)

I hope you like this post and will help you to get back a little more privacy.

Just to be said: Of course there are a lot other ways to increase your privacy, but i think that Brave is a very good and easy solution, especially for the "standarduser".

If you got this far: Thank you for reading. :)