BEST EXTENSIONS FOR PRIVATE BROWSING
1 Privacy Badger
Chromium, Edge & Firefox www.snipca.com/40756
Most content-blocking extensions rely on lists of tracking servers, but Privacy Badger’s smarter approach lets it catch trackers other tools miss. It monitors which domains are tracking you, sends them a do-not-track signal and blocks them if they refuse to comply. You can control which domains can connect to your browser, by using colour-coded sliders to block or allow them, or only block tracking cookies (see screenshot above).
2 uBlock Origin
Chromium, Edge & Firefox www.snipca.com/40755
This excellent extension blocks ads, trackers and malware sites, with no need for configuration, and – unlike some rival tools – doesn’t allow ‘acceptable ads’ from companies that pay for the privilege. It uses several filter lists to determine which domains to block and lets you add more on the ‘My filters’ tab of its Settings. Usefully, you can disable uBlock Origin with a single click if you have problems accessing a site.
3 DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials
Chromium & Firefox www.snipca.com/40759
DuckDuckGo’s extension doesn’t merely set the private search engine as your browser’s default provider, but also the extension automatically blocks trackers and provides a privacy report for every site you visit. This includes details of whether the site uses an encrypted connection, the number of trackers blocked and the standard of its privacy practices (if known), as well as an overall privacy grade. The add-on uses Global Privacy Control (see box below) to tell sites not to sell and share your data.
4 Decentraleyes
Chromium, Edge & Firefox www.snipca.com/40757 Decentraleyes protects you against background tracking by content delivery networks (CDNs), which populate web pages with ads, images and other elements that can collect your data and even spread malware.
Blocking CDNs can cause some sites to break, but this extension tricks sites into displaying its own local files to ‘plug the gap’ (see screenshot below). Decentraleyes works in tandem with tools such as uBlock Origin, and make many pages load faster.
5 Trace
Chromium & Firefox www.snipca.com/40753
Trace offers a wealth of options for protecting your privacy online. It blocks tracking servers, conceals your IP address, protects you against fingerprinting, removes trackers from URLs, deletes third-party cookies and much more. This huge choice of settings can seem overwhelming, and some cause problems with loading sites, so we recommend choosing a protection level, such as High (see screenshot above), on Trace’s Settings screen, to let it optimise your browser for you.