There are some obvious steps you can take to protect your privacy on the internet. How many steps you take depends on your personal preference and comfort level for how much information you share on the internet. People who have very little concern may not take any steps to hide their identity, while more paranoid people may take multiple steps to lock down their information.

Avoid Google (All Google Products)

Google uses all of its products to feed data into its digital advertising platform. This includes Google search, Chrome, Google Drive, Android and many other Google tools that you may use regularly.

Confuse The Trackers Collecting Your Data

One way to minimize the effectiveness of the tools that are tracking your data is to “confuse” them. Rather than blocking them completely, you can feed them false information so that the companies behind the trackers will have a harder time determining who you are and what you’re interested in.

Block Useless Trackers

While some tracking on the web is useful, there are many types of tracking that serve almost no purpose for you. Businesses may want to track you so that they can determine if their marketing strategies are working. — But this just leads to losing control of your data and giving it to the companies that track you.

Be Weary of Public WiFi Networks

Public WiFi can be very convenient, but you should be extra cautious when using these networks. If you land on a site that doesn’t use HTTPS, someone else on the public WiFi network could snoop on your browsing. When you’re on public networks, you’re vulnerable to Man-in-the-Middle attacks — so don’t do any sensitive browsing like shopping or checking your bank account.

Delete Your Old Email Accounts (and Other Accounts)

When you stop using an account but don’t delete it, you’re leaving (potentially private) information about yourself in a mailbox that someone could hack into. If you’re no longer using an email account, you should delete the account. This will delete the inbox full your data so that it’s no longer vulnerable to hacks or data breaches.

Be Cautious With Free Apps

Typically a company wouldn’t make an app if it wouldn’t help them make a profit. With free apps, one of the most common ways to monetize is with ads and selling data.

Turn Off Location Tracking on Your Devices

Location is another data point that is nearly invaluable for companies serving contextual ads. If Google or other advertising platforms can get cues about your behavior from your location, they can serve ads for the businesses near you or related to places you visit frequently.

Use Ad Blockers

If you love ads, go ahead and skip this step. However, if you’re concerned with privacy from companies like Google and Facebook, ad blockers are an important step to minimizing tracking. Display ads aren’t just annoying, but they also contain tracking scripts that give the advertisers information about you.

Lock Down Your Privacy Settings

You can accomplish a lot in the way of protecting your data, just by tweaking the settings in your existing internet accounts. On your social media accounts, make your profiles private so that only people who follow you can see your profile. On your Google account turn off the location tracking feature.

People often assume that they need to get some complex encryption software to protect their data online, but that’s not always the case. In many cases, some small tweaks to your settings will fix your concerns.

Use a Privacy-Friendly Search Engine

If you’re using Google, you’re giving Google access to your entire search history, which just makes the company better at showing you ads. With private search engines, you’re sharing almost no information with the search engine itself. You’ll still have to protect yourself from the tracking on the sites you visit after the search engine, but there’s no reason to willingly share your search data with Google.

Ghostpeek

Ghostpeek is a search engine that focuses on delivering high-quality search results all without the complex tracking that many other search engines use.

When you search with Ghostpeek, your search terms expire from your browsing history. This way no one can snoop on your searches in your browsing history.

DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo is an internet search engine that emphasizes protecting searchers’ privacy and avoiding the filter bubble of personalized search results. DuckDuckGo distinguishes itself from other search engines by not profiling its users and by showing all users the same search results for a given search term.