Guides

An unencrypted connection can expose page traffic to people between you and a website.

Search terms can reveal questions you have never told another person.

Browser-level ad technology can normalize tracking as infrastructure, beyond the scripts on any one page.

A browser account can become another link between browsing habits and a larger corporate identity.

Bookmarks, tabs, and history can sketch your private life.

The browser is present for every site you visit.

Protection delayed until you find, install, and maintain an extension leaves ordinary browsing exposed.

The browser default may be reasonable for most pages but insufficient for a site where the stakes are higher.

Tracking is easy to dismiss when it happens invisibly.

Permanent device permissions can outlive the call or task that justified them.

Occasional news, shopping, and image sites rarely need a permanent browser identity for you.

A site you visited once can retain identifiers and recognize you months later without providing any lasting benefit.

Redirects and URL markers can connect a newsletter click to later browsing, even when the pages themselves seem unrelated.

A product view can follow you for weeks as targeted ads, reminding you how much was collected from a single click.

Researching a political issue, a legal problem, or workplace organizing can reveal beliefs and vulnerabilities.

A job search can affect your livelihood.

Research about debt, insurance, or a major purchase can be commercially valuable to targeting systems.

Looking up a condition, treatment, or clinic is private life, yet pages about health can still contain advertising trackers.

Search-related pages and the sites reached through them can include advertising technology.

An ad slot can bring outside code and trackers onto a page you otherwise trust.