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Two browser extensions everyone should be using

Posted in Software, Technology

Every minute you spend on the internet, you are being watched. Each site you visit tracks you and tries to sell your information to the highest bidder. It is known.

So what tools can you employ to keep your internet browsing private? As a wise man once said, a browser needs extensions as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge:

uBlock Origin

Best ad-blocker in the market. Period. Other major ones are making money selling your browsing information.[1] Or allowing companies to bypass ad-blocking by paying them, effectively holding you for a ransom.[2][3][4] What do we say to websites that collect our information to sell us ads? Not today.

Download for Chrome, Firefox

Privacy Badger

For a basic explanation I (more or less) quote the makers of this extension, the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

When you play the game of viewing webpages, you remain private or you die. Each page will often be made up of content from many different sources. (For example, a news webpage might load the actual article from the news company, ads from an ad company, and the comments section from a different company that’s been contracted out to provide that service.) Privacy Badger keeps track of all of this. If as you browse the web, the same source seems to be tracking your browser across different websites, then Privacy Badger springs into action, telling your browser not to load any more content from that source. And when your browser stops loading content from a source, that source can no longer track you. Voila!

Download for Chrome, Firefox

What other extension do you think deserves a place in this list? Lets have a trial by (verbal) combat in the comment section below.

Abhijit Tomar is an IIT Bombay alumnus currently working as a software developer at Microsoft. When he's not programming, he's usually out for a run.

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