A terrific article appeared on Wired the other day about how to protect your computer from the prying eyes of the web. The story explores privacy and cookie settings for the following browsers:
- Google Chrome
- Mozilla Firefox
- Microsoft Edge
- Apple Safari
How to lock down what websites can access on your computer
As websites and web apps have grown in complexity, so have their demands: They want access to your webcam to make video calls, they want to know where in the world you are to serve up local information, and so on.
In fact, websites now ask for almost as many permissions as the apps on your phone do, though you might not be as familiar with how to manage them. We’ll show you how.
We’ll also explain how to restrict the cookies and other data websites can save locally on your laptop. It’s up to you whether you let sites track your identity across the web to better personalize the ads you see, but you should know the options that are available …
The truth is, the only way to be truly invisible online these days is to use a browser like Tor on the Dark Web. Then again, if you don’t know what that is or how to get there, you should probably steer clear — “Dark” is the word that describes it in more ways than one.
— Joe McGauley / Thrillist