There is no greater feeling than knowing that when you’re surfing the internet, you can have a safe browsing experience.
Now that’s not something that is essentially automatic, you will have to customize your browsing experience yourself and determine how safe you want it.
Browsers and websites are like information farms. They are aimed at knowing and gathering information about you, your activities and behave in a way they feel will improve your user experience.
They will hinder all ways to ensure you can experience a safe browsing across the internet.
On the surface look, this is not a threat to you and most of the times, you don’t even know the effects of actions taken or information gathered from you when browsing.
But for the sake of you having the best and safe browsing experience you seek, I will teach you how to escape the scrutiny and monitoring.
How to have a safe browsing experience
- Logout of your all Social Media
If privacy and security is what you consider safe when browsing, then the first thing you should do is logout of all your social media accounts on your browser.
The reason is that, sites essentially communicate with one another and your browser collects cookies about your activities.
Cookies are like data crumbs gathered from what you do online, saved in your browser and shared among other sites. They include your common personal information.
This is why sometimes, when you visit a new site, they relate with you like they have known you for a long time and you wonder how they show you what exactly you need.
So this is what happens. When you do anything on social media, you’re studied and your information is stored on your browser.
Later on, you will use the same browser to search for other things online on different websites. When you do this, your browser uses the cookies from your logged-in social media account(s) to serve you and tailor your experience.
These sites also save their own cookies in your browser and combine with the ones from social media.
This way, cookies make sure you don’t have a safe browsing experience because a profile is created for you based on the information gathered from your activities online. You’re being watched!
But if you logout of all your accounts from the browser, there will be no personal information to save about you and share among sites. That way, you can have a safe browsing experience.
You will be able to do all you want, without fear of being monitored.
- Logout of Google Account
Your Google Gmail account is an information vault on its own. What Google knows about you cannot be underestimated at all.
Have you ever experienced a situation when you search for a particular term on Google and under a specific result, you see something like “You visited this page on 31/05/21.” after the description, like this image below?
This occurs because you’ve visited that page before and Google saved the details of your visit in your account.
Now imagine you visited somewhere illegal and did some sort of prohibited activities on the internet, which is totally not advisable, you have been captured by a Google CCTV.
Note that every time we browse a site online, our IP address is recorded. This eventually links to your phone, computer, or the public network you use, so that’s very wide. IP addresses change!
But when those activities are linked directly to your Google Account, then it has become personal and your browsing experience is no longer safe.
The reason why this happens is because you gave Google permission to monitor your web activity. So anything they find, they link to your account to serve you personalized ads.
However, for someone who would rather be a ghost online without anyone spying on them, you would need to prevent this from happening.
You can decide to revoke its access to your web activity, but you can’t totally remove their involvement in tailoring your experience as long as your account is still logged in.
So ultimately, logging out of your Google Account will ensure your browsing experience is secure.
- Use Private Browsing or Go Incognito
Private browsing or Incognito on browser is aimed at giving you a safe browsing experience online in two ways.
The first way is that, cookies are not stored on your browser in this mode. So automatically when you browse, no information about you is stored.
You will not even be able to save sensitive information like automated logins and your passwords.
Simply put, everything you do on private browsing or Incognito mode go into oblivion when you exit.
The important aspect of this is that, nothing is linked to you on this mode. You’re surfing the web like a man with no ID.
The second way it helps is that, you can’t be spied on by who you know too. This because all your browsing histories are destroyed immediately you exit the mode. No tabs , no bookmarks.
This way, if you leave your phone for a while, no one can know what you have done with it even if they have your passwords.
I personally love to do this a lot when I want to login to my top sites like online bank accounts and other financial sites.
No one knows me or has a clue of which site I visited minutes ago. That’s completely safe to me and I feel at peace.
It reduces the chances of being hacked or locked out of your accounts and ensures you’ve a browsing experience that’s powerfully secure.
- Use a Dedicated Browser
I don’t know how this is gonna sound to you, but on my phone, I have more than 6 browsers which I use from time to time.
Well, before you pounce on me, they are not for something bad. I just love to do separate things with separate browsers.
For example, I have a browser I use for Upwork and I use another for Fiverr.
One thing I found out about browsers is that, the IP address on browser A for your phone may be different from the IP on browser B for that same device.
It only happens sometimes, but it’s a good bet. This masks your real IP as if you’re using VPN.
Also, many browsers have their own built-in VPN that changes IP of users randomly.
- Visit only Secured Websites
One thing you shouldn’t omit when you’re trying to ensure your browsing experience is safe and secure is to visit only Secured Websites.
Secured Websites are sites that have the valid SSL encryption on the domain of their site.
The importance of this encryption is to ensure that no sensitive information like passwords, email addresses and credit card numbers are siphoned between your browser and the site by hackers.
If the SSL encryption is not in place, then you expose yourself telling hackers your information yourself.
The good thing is that, you can easily recognize these sites because your browser will warn you about them. It even goes as far as warning you about partially secure ones that carry not-so-trusted SSL encryption.
But in case you don’t get the warnings, check the URL of the site your visiting from the address bar and locate the https or http.
HTTP means it’s not secure and the safety of your information cannot be guaranteed while HTTPS means, “be rest assured, your information is safe”.
- Use Ad-Blockers
Your experience surfing the internet also has to do with how well you can navigate sites without being disturbed by ads and popups. We call it user experience.
These (ads and popups) have dangerous negative impacts on your navigation and some of these popups lead to malware sites than can install viruses to your devices if not careful.
So if you’re looking for safety and security while browsing, consider using ad-blockers. Most new browsers have built in ad-blockers that you can enable with just a tap, so it shouldn’t be a hassle for you.
- Use VPN
VPN services are great ways to customize your browsing experience anywhere and anytime.
Since VPNs change your IP address which interprets your location and identity, so the internet doesn’t have an identity for you to begin with.
So anything you do with the IP address of a VPN is not linked to you, it will just be regarded as a proxy or a public network because two or more users can share same IP address together, at the same time.
However, sometimes you may get suggestions based on what other users are searching for, and they get for yours too, so it’s not exactly perfect but it can save you.
This is as a result of the fact that when you turn off your VPN correctly and used private browsing, all those histories with VPN is gone.
So grab a VPN today and ensure your browsing experience is safe and secure.
If you’re struggling with speed, read my guide on how to make VPN connection faster.
- Always Turn off Your GPS Location
Your GPS Location is the feature on all phones that tell the exact location of a device on the map.
Have you been browsing one day and saw something like “New York● Based on your past activity” at the bottom the Google results page, and you kept wondering how it happened?
So this is what happened; you turned on both your location and internet connection at the same time, and in the course of you trying to download or upload stuffs on the internet, Google found your exact location from the map and noted it down.
So automatically, since your exact location is know, if you’re deem fit to be a problem, or you search something illegal, the police can just come straight to your doorstep to take you away.
A few days ago, I read about a 13 years old boy asking online that he’s scared Google might go to arrest him, for searching something illegal on the internet.
If there was nothing that could be used to identify him, I’m yhink he would have had to fear what might become of him.
Thus, when you turn off your location and use some of the other methods I explained above, that’s how you can have a safe browsing experience, with high security.
Conclusion
I have just listed and explained some of the ways you can use to ensure you have a great and safe browsing experience.
However, the order is not a rating factor and you should choose maybe 2 or 3 that you find interesting and suits your needs.
Although, if you need help deciding, let me know in the comment section. I can help you arrive at a decision by analyzing your needs and what will serve it appropriately.
Thanks for reading, don’t forget to share this post.
