Internet tracking: How and why we're followed online

The pages you visit, what you type into the browser, your downloads—we have no interest in or access to this type of information . Either it is stored locally on your computer, or it is encrypted to be synchronized.

But search engines can track all the searches you do on a website, right down to the IP address. So, to answer the question why is internet tracking bad? It's simply becuase they can:

✔️ Record what you do on that website, that is, the searches you perform and the results you select.
✔️ Recognize you if you visit the site again, through cookies, local storage, IP address, or fingerprinting.
✔️ Create a profile with everything you usually look for and writes down changes over time, for example, if you suddenly start looking for information about a disease. 

However, this information about your behavior on a single website is not enough to create a 'decent' profile that can be sold to third parties.

It will have to be combined with much more information from other websites, and this requires cross-tracking, from one site to another.

Most browsers can't follow you from one site to another, but there are some notable exceptions.

A browser will be able to track you from one site to another, as long as the sites you visit contain the browser's tracking code on their pages.

Google, which owns most of the world's ad space, has crawlers on more than two-thirds of websites. which comes in handy for cross tracking.

A search engine can also follow you from one website to another if that site is owned by it, as in the case of YouTube, for example.

Today, we bring you three ways to avoid internet tracking in 2023.

Choose a search engine that does not track you

There are several search engines that pride themselves on protecting user privacy by not tracking you or sharing your searches.

A browser that doesn't track you won't store any of your searches. Or, in any case, it will do so by anonymizing the user.

Alternative search engines do not have internet trackers either.

Be careful with search suggestions

In most browsers, when you start typing a word, the search engine gives you several options to autocomplete it, before you finish.

There is no doubt that this is a very practical function, which can make your searches faster and more effective.

However, the way to achieve this is to allow your browser to see what you type, even when you don't actually perform the search. Which has considerable implications in terms of privacy.

Everything you type will be sent to your search engine, and this information can be very revealing.

Imagine that you wanted to type the address of a website and you started by typing the name (“vivaldi”). Until it is recognized as a web address (“vivaldi.com”), the search engine will already have received the term “vivaldi”. With some web addresses this is not a problem, but others could reveal personal information about you.

For this reason, search suggestions in Vivaldi are disabled by default. It is you who has to decide if you want to activate this option, choosing between comfort or privacy.