How to stop trackers? Essential tips for privacy protection

Many users don’t realise they need to stop trackers if they want to stay safe online. Because they collect and store much of our private information.
Search engines, social networks, and advertising companies are tracking and storing a substantial amount of personal data. As a result, hackers may use these tracking cookies to gain access to our online accounts, and they can jeopardize our security.
In this article you will learn why to block trackers, how they get on our computers and how to block them safely!

Why do we need to stop trackers?

Trackers work in many forms and serve a purpose — to track performance metrics. Currently tracking covers roughly 80% of the Internet. It’s tracking the movement of about 85 billion devices worldwide.

Tracking cookies work by remembering which website you have visited. Thus, websites can use them again and again to track us as we move around the Internet.

Marketers adapted fast. They are now very good at gathering this information. Then, they use it to build sophisticated profiles of us and tailor advertising. But such information can threaten our security, by allowing targeted delivery of ads.

As we are online most of the time, devices transmit transaction information, call logs and emails. Also, they record location information, our user IDs and passwords when we log in.

These logs and information are then sent back to websites. Particularly, Facebook ads could be threatening because they’re able to glean a lot of information about their target. And for this, they use third-party cookies.

Researchers discovered that even the most restrictive ”do not track” browsers can be tricked to send back a user’s ID. This is a unique device identifier assigned with every device.

Then, websites store and share the ID with third parties: social networks, advertisers, ad platforms and much more. Then, all of them may use it to track users online.

To solve the tracking issue on our end, we need to ensure our browser is set to “do not track”. Some people use third-party “do not track” tools. This option comes with some browsers. But not all of them manage to block all the trackers.

How do trackers get to our computers?

When we visit a website, a small piece of information is transmitted from our computers to that website. Then, the website uses it to give the more relevant information and place advertisements or marketing on our behalf.

When we return to a website later, the same information is retrieved. These pieces of code automatically attach to most pages on the Internet. And there are three types: advertising, suggestion and behavioral trackers.

• Advertising trackers send some details about our actions while visiting a website. Then, advertisers use it to personalize the ads we see, and track us.
• Suggestion trackers are used mainly but not exclusively by search engines. Thus, our Google search results are personalized 10% to 50%. The percent depends on the degree of our historical search history.
• Behavioral trackers store a small amount of information about us. This tells browsers “what” and “when” to track us. Then we are targeted by advertisers, based on this data.

But all share a common goal: view information to influence our choices and gather it. Thus, each of them “steals” a small amount of data from our browsers. Some of this information they collect through cookies, some they gather automatically.

How do we stop them?

If we visit, for instance,our dentist’s office, we’re likely not going to enter anything personal. Neither would search engines. They simply deliver content that “matches the query.” So, this is ”Personalized Search.” It is a critical component of modern search.

But the order of pages ranked for one particular keyword may vary wildly. As a result, Google assigns any keyword as a search term to the first web page that presents it. So, this is the fastest method for websites to increase their search results.

Nevertheless, then they track us. So, we have all the reasons to stop trackers and keep them away. As a Windows native ad blocker, Ad Guardian Plus does this for us. It blocks behind-our-back search and social media trackers. Thus, we can completely protect our privacy.

Download it from here!