HOW TO USE TOR BROWSER’S TOOLS TO PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY
IF YOU WANT TO MANUALLY DELETE COOKIES DURING A BROWSING SESSION:
If you’re concerned about your privacy on the Internet, most experts tend to recommend either FIrefox or TOR Browser.
name Tor stands for The Onion Routing, which was the original description of how the opensource browser anonymises its users.
As Tor’s site explains, it does this by encrypting your information and relaying it through Tor’s system of servers (called a circuit), so that your ISP can’t track your activity.
While this efficiently protects your identity, it can also become troublesome with sites such as financial institutions or medical services that see your login as not coming from your home computer. It can also slow things down.
The Tor Browser just bundles Tor tech into a Firefox wrapper, so using this browser doesn’t mean you’re suddenly going to stumble onto the dark web.
zWhen you install the Tor Browser, it is set by default to private browsing mode, which will delete all cookies and site data when the browser is closed. — Click on the three bars in the top right corner of the browser window. Go to “Options” (on a PC) or “Preferences” (on a Mac). — Go to “Privacy & Security” on the left-hand menu.
— Find the “History” section in the main area and uncheck “Always use private browsing mode.” You will need to restart the browser; you can then choose what you want it to remember when you exit (such as your browsing and download history). — In the “Privacy & Security” section, look for “Browser Privacy” (which will be the first section on the page. Find “Cookies and Site Data” and click on “Manage Data…”
— You can then use the “Remove Selected” button to remove data from a particular site or just click “Remove All” to delete all of it.
— On the “Browser Privacy” page, you can also click on “Manage Permissions…” to specify what cookies should be blocked or allowed for individual websites. Enter in the URL and then select either “Block,” “Allow for Session,” or “Allow.” — Finally, you can select “Clear Data” to delete all cookies and data currently stored by the browser.
According to the browser’s support page, Tor offers strong protection against fingerprinting. “Tor Browser is specifically engineered to have a nearly identical (we’re not perfect!) fingerprint across its users,” it says. “This means each Tor Browser user looks like every other Tor Browser user, making it difficult to track any individual user.”
The Tor Browser doesn’t block ads, but Tor also recommends that you don’t install extensions as they may cause privacy or functionality issues. As a result, while Tor protects you against tracking, you may still have to put up with the presence of the ads themselves.