Anonymous Browsing Guide in 2024: Avoid Online Tracking

Key Takeaways: Anonymous Internet Browsing

Anonymous browsing techniques aim to reduce personal data exposure and minimize digital footprints. This protects users from tracking by advertisers, data brokers and potential malicious actors.
Common web tracking methods include third-party cookies, IP address logging, browser and device fingerprinting, tracking pixels and social media widgets. These techniques are usually used in combination.
Tools for enhancing online privacy include privacy-focused VPNs that hide your IP address, anonymous search engines that don’t log your activity, privacy-focused browsers with built-in privacy features, as well as other traffic routing systems like Tor and proxy servers.

Facts & Expert Analysis: Anonymous Browsing Techniques

Virtual private networks: A VPN is software that encrypts user traffic and masks your IP address by routing traffic through a remote server. Because they handle all of your traffic, VPNs require some degree of trust, which is ideally bolstered by a no-logs policy.
Proxy servers: Proxy servers aren’t as reliable as VPNs. They also route your traffic and hide your IP address, but they don’t encrypt anything and rarely have airtight privacy policies.
Tor Browser: The Tor network employs onion routing. This encrypts your data in multiple layers and routes it through an entry node, a middle node and an exit node, which are all operated by volunteers. Unfortunately, some exit nodes are run by hackers and government agencies.

Best VPN for Anonymous Browsing

Your browsing history can reveal all kinds of sensitive personal data that can be tracked, analyzed and exploited. With big tech conglomerates, ISPs, governments, advertisers and hackers all vying for that information, anonymous browsing has become an increasingly valuable skill.

This guide will teach you what anonymous browsing is and explain how it differs from just using Incognito mode. In addition, you’ll learn how websites track you as you browse the web. We’ll cover practical methods and tools to help you navigate the web more discreetly, so follow along to learn how to stay anonymous online.

10/03/2021

Update the article to include how-to guides, FAQ, key takeaways and new images.
10/10/2024 Facts checked

Rewritten to include more modern anonymous browsing methods and explain the methods that websites use to track your activity.
updates

What Is Anonymous Browsing?

Anonymous browsing refers to minimizing your digital footprint on the internet by masking your identity, location, device information and browsing habits. The goal of anonymous browsing is to prevent third parties from tracking you across the different websites you visit, and to reduce the amount of personally identifying data you leave behind.

This way of browsing the web makes it difficult for anyone to track your online activity, identify you, and profile you for targeted advertising or social engineering. While true anonymity is difficult — if not impossible — to achieve, anonymous browsing best practices can still reduce the risk of exposing your personal data to the internet.

    
    Comprehend the essential role a VPN plays in safeguarding your digital life
Gain a deep understanding of how VPNs function under the hood
Develop the ability to distinguish fact from fiction in VPN promotions

what is anonymous browsing — Anonymous browsing relies on a combination of techniques and tools, as well as good general privacy practices to keep you anonymous online.

Reasons to Browse Anonymously

You may think you don’t need to browse anonymously because you have nothing to hide if you’re not a criminal. However, that’s not quite the case. There are many practical reasons to reduce the amount of data you leave across the web. Here are a few reasons why you should consider anonymous browsing:

Protect online privacy: Anonymous browsing can prevent companies from creating detailed profiles of your online behaviors and personal interests.
Ensure online security: Anonymous browsing can protect you from personalized cyberattacks that use social engineering methods.
Bypass censorship: If your government censors certain content, anonymous browsing can help bypass the blocks by masking your IP address and changing your perceived location.
Avoid price discrimination: Price discrimination is a practice where a company adjusts its prices based on data like your age, location or spending habits. Anonymous browsing can prevent this.
Avoid targeted ads: Using anonymous browsing stops advertisers from creating ad profiles on you and serving you targeted ads.
Access restricted content: If you use an anonymous browsing tool like a VPN or proxy, you can change your virtual location to access local content in another area.

Anonymous Browsing vs Private Browsing

Private browsing simply involves using your browser’s built-in private mode, such as Google Chrome’s Incognito mode. This browsing method prevents the browser from creating on-device data, which means no browser history is kept on your device.

However, it does nothing to stop websites and other third parties from tracking your activity. As a recent court case showed, it certainly doesn’t prevent Google itself from harvesting your Incognito mode browsing data.

In contrast, anonymous browsing aims to block tech companies, ISPs, government agencies and cybercriminals from harvesting your data. Various anonymous browsing techniques can encrypt your data, hide or alter your IP address, and change your overall online identity. These methods attempt to decouple your browsing activity from your person.

How Web Tracking Works

Web tracking utilizes various techniques and technologies to monitor and collect data about your online activity. Those looking to track user activity may use at least one of the following methods, though they generally employ a combination of them.

Third-Party Cookies

Cookies are small files stored on your device that a website can access to learn information about you, your device and your browsing activity. Websites usually need to use some first-party cookies to function properly or provide simple conveniences, such as keeping you logged in to your account.

However, websites can also host third-party cookies from other websites, allowing them to track your activity across multiple sites. Thanks to the GDPR, most websites now require you to give express permission for the use of third-party cookies, though adherence to this practice varies by region. You should always make sure to reject third-party cookies when visiting a website.

IP Address Tracking

Every device on the internet is assigned its own IP address, which serves as a unique identifier for that connection. Most websites log IP addresses to gain information on where their user is visiting from, as well as which ISP they’re using.

An IP address can reveal your approximate location. If you’re connecting from a business or using a VPN, it can identify which business or VPN service you’re utilizing.

Moreover, while an IP address can’t identify a person directly, it can be used alongside other collected data to create a more detailed profile and reveal your identity.

Device & Browser Fingerprinting

Originally a fraud prevention method, device fingerprinting can reveal information about your device, like the device type, operating system, hardware configuration, IP address, time zone, screen resolution, installed fonts and drivers, and web browsers. While these data points may be insignificant on their own, they can identify a device with very high accuracy when combined.

Social media widgets are the “like” and “share” buttons you see on some websites. Even if you never interact with them, merely loading them onto the page will make them connect to the social media site’s servers, revealing that your device has accessed the website.

Tracking Pixels

Pixel tracking involves embedding a tiny, transparent 1×1 pixel image into a webpage or email. This technique tracks when the image (known as a tracking pixel) is loaded from the server onto the user’s display.

Depending on where the tracking pixel is located on the website or email, it can reveal when a website was accessed, if and when an email was opened, or whether the user viewed a certain part of the page.

Web Beacons & JavaScript Tags

Web beacons are similar to pixel tracking as they also involve embedding a transparent 1×1 pixel image into a website or email. These beacons can be used with JavaScript to provide more detailed analytics by running certain scripts whenever the web beacon is loaded.

Analytics Tools

Analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, provide website owners with valuable data on user behavior across their sites. These tools typically work by utilizing JavaScript tags to analyze how a user interacts with a webpage, how long they stay on it and how far down they scroll, along with other trackable behaviors.

Thankfully, you can use plenty of tools to keep yourself anonymous online. Just remember that no single tool can protect you completely. We often tout VPNs as the best standalone privacy tool, but even they aren’t foolproof. For example, they don’t protect against things like device fingerprinting. We suggest using a few of the following online security tools in combination.

1. Private Browsers

Using a privacy-focused browser can go a long way toward preventing cookies and browser fingerprinting. As you can read in our browser fingerprinting guide, we’re fans of Safari’s anti-tracking option, which makes your hardware configuration seem more generic. We also recommend Firefox’s enhanced tracking prevention and Brave’s fingerprint blocking.

brave browser fingerprinting — The Brave browser blocks browser fingerprinting.

2. Anonymous Search Engines

If you use Google Search or Microsoft Bing, there’s nothing stopping their parent companies from analyzing your search history. In contrast, anonymous search engines don’t store user information or search data, and they often use proxy systems to submit searches on the user’s behalf.

One popular private search engine is DuckDuckGo, which doesn’t personalize search results or collect advertising data. Startpage is another example that goes a step further by routing your queries through a proxy for added anonymity.

use duck screenshot — DuckDuckGo is a search engine that doesn’t log user traffic.

3. Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)

A VPN is an indispensable piece of software for the privacy-minded. It encrypts your web traffic, making it unreadable to anyone trying to snoop, including your ISP. A VPN also routes your traffic through its own servers and communicates with the internet on your behalf, masking your IP address and identity.

Due to its traffic routing properties, a VPN can make you appear to be located in a different place. This allows you to bypass censorship, access content that’s unavailable locally and even get better deals on online services. Popular examples are NordVPN, Surfshark and ExpressVPN, which are all on our list of the best VPN services.

nordvpn windows home — NordVPN is a very fast and reliable VPN with servers across the globe.

4. Proxy Servers

Proxy servers are similar to VPNs — they route your traffic, and they interface between you and the internet. However, there’s one major difference: They don’t encrypt your traffic. This makes proxy servers unreliable for privacy purposes and even for accessing online content, as it’s fairly easy for a website to recover your true IP address while you’re using one.

what is a proxy server — Proxy servers replace your IP address, but they aren’t as secure as VPNs.

5. The Tor Browser

The Tor Browser is best known for being the gateway to the deep web, but it can also serve as a private browser that prevents tracking. Tor Browser uses what’s called onion routing — a process where your connection is encrypted and routed through a series of volunteer-operated nodes.

In theory, this makes Tor highly effective for online anonymity. However, its volunteer-based nature means it’s much more susceptible to traffic manipulation, especially if the browser happens to connect to a malicious end node. You can learn more about the Tor network in our guide that compares VPNs, proxies and Tor.

Ahmia Search — Tor can let you access the deep web, but it’s also a
great tool to enhance your privacy.

6. Private Email Services

Most mainstream email providers like Gmail and Outlook aren’t exactly privacy-friendly. Thankfully, some private email services offer end-to-end encryption to ensure that only the intended recipient can read the messages you send. Two popular examples are Proton Mail and Tutanota.

Proton mail unsubscribe — Proton Mail is one of the best end-to-end encrypted email services.

Although most operating systems and social media platforms track your activity in some form — regardless of your settings and preferences — you can take steps to minimize tracking. Here are a few guides on how to stay as anonymous as possible on social media platforms and smartphones.

Anonymous Browsing on TikTok

TikTok lets you create a private profile and set several preferences to decrease the visibility of your account. You’ll find all of these in the “privacy” tab of your profile settings.

Set your account to “private” and disable your activity status.
Disable social media contact syncing and suggesting your account to others.
Limit interactions with your account by disabling downloads, hiding your “following” and “like” lists, and disabling “profile view” and “post view” history.

Anonymous Browsing on LinkedIn

LinkedIn offers several visibility settings that let you limit the information people can see. However, this might be a double-edged sword if you’re looking for job opportunities and want to put yourself out there. Whatever your circumstances, these steps can help you browse more anonymously on LinkedIn, and you can find them all in the “visibility” tab in your settings.

Switch your “profile viewing” setting to “private mode” to limit what information is available to others when you view their profile, and disable “page visit visibility” for organizations.
Limit “email visibility” to only yourself and disable email address exporting.
Disable “connection visibility” and “follow visibility.”
Set your “last name visibility” to the initial only.
Disallow profile data exporting.
Disable the “profile discovery and visibility off LinkedIn” setting, including your phone number and email searches.
Limit the visibility of your LinkedIn activity.

How to Turn On Anonymous Browsing on Reddit

Reddit’s “anonymous browsing” option lets you scroll through the platform without an account. To turn on anonymous browsing, just select your profile picture in the top-right corner, then select your username. This lets you switch to a different account or access anonymous browsing.

Note that while you’re in anonymous browsing mode, you can’t comment, vote on posts or do any other action that requires an account. Also, much like using Incognito mode in Chrome, Reddit still tracks your browsing behavior, so you’re not truly anonymous.

Reddit doesn’t allow for much privacy customization, though you can still adjust some settings within your account menu to make your browsing a bit more private.

Disable location tracking.
Remove your gender information.
Disconnect your Google and Apple accounts.

Final Thoughts

While complete online anonymity remains next to impossible, the techniques and tools covered in this guide should substantially improve your online privacy. To ensure effective anonymous browsing, you should use a combination of approaches. It’s also important to be mindful of your online behavior, and to regularly update your knowledge of tracking methods and privacy tools.

What are your personal reasons to stay anonymous online? Do you use any tools to maintain anonymity? Which privacy tools do you use? Please let us know in the comments below, and as always, thank you for reading.

FAQ: Anonymous Web Browsing

Anonymous browsing refers to using the internet in a way that minimizes what data you reveal to the websites you visit, your ISP or any other entities that might be tracking your online activity.
No method of browsing is truly anonymous. However, you can get pretty close to true anonymity by implementing anonymous browsing techniques to reduce your digital footprint to a bare minimum.
There is no truly anonymous browser, but Brave and Firefox come close. Still, the level of anonymity that your browser provides will depend on your chosen privacy settings and your mindfulness regarding your browsing habits.
You can go anonymous browsing by utilizing anonymous browsing methods, such as using a VPN, private browser, non-tracking search engine and private email service.