Staying anonymous on the web is tricky because there’s an arms race going on between those who want to help protect your privacy and those who want to know everything about you.
Unscrupulous tracking tools are getting better at recognising the unique fingerprints you don’t even realise you’re leaving behind.
Trace is the latest privacy-focused blocking tool to take on these trackers.
It uses a range of new tricks to stop your browser leaking information, and keeps up with the latest tools used by tricky websites and services, such as various types of browser fingerprinting and JavaScript tools that try to suck information out of your browser.
Follow the steps to protect yourself while staying anonymous.
Install the add-on in Chrome or Firefox. After you’ve continued to browse the web for a bit, click the toolbar icon 1 to see a summary of what’s been blocked so far. 2 The app blocks a range of potential problems including requests to run embedded code, media files (to stop the originating site tracking you) and suspicious websites.
There’s a chance that you might come across pages that you’d like to use but don’t work properly when the add-on is running. We found that with Google Docs the site loads but no document appears. If this happens, and you still want to use the site, click the toolbar icon and select the Whitelist option. 1
The current root domain 1 (such as google.com) and the hostname 2 (which may include a subdomain, such as docs.google.com) are shown. You can choose whether to whitelist the entire domain 3 or just the hostname. 4
If you want to edit the domains at this stage, you can do that, too.
Click Settings to get to the Trace Dashboard. 1 Here, you’ll find further information on the status of the protection and what it’s been blocking. 2 You’ll also be able to see if there are any planned maintenance works scheduled 3 that might have an impact on the service.
If you want to edit domains you’ve already included on the Whitelist, click the Whitelist option 1 and select the domain you want to edit from the list. 2 Choose either Remove Domain 3 or Edit Domain. 4
If you want to add a new domain without visiting it, you can do that from here, too.
Click Settings 1 to explore all the options available to you. The default settings are fine, but it’s worth exploring the four main headings in case you fancy tweaking something. Each section contains a range of tools – just click a name to see information about what it does. 2 Clicking Enabled or Disabled 3 toggles the tool into the opposite state.
Some of the settings have Advanced or Configure options. Click either word to open a pop-out window. 1 Some of the extra tools may only be available in the Premium version 2 but others, such as Facebook Domains, are optional. 3 This tool stops Facebook tracking you by blocking it completely.
Check in the Browser Settings section that everything you want to use is switched on. For example, Network Prediction is Unprotected 1 by default, because it stops Chrome preloading websites, which slows it down. On fast connections it’s a barely perceptible enhancement, though, so you might prefer to be protected.
The Extra section 1 contains settings that are currently experimental, though they’re switched on by default. At the moment, it includes TLD protection, 2 which stops you visiting sites hosted on Top Level Domains (‘.com’, ‘.org’ and the like) that aren’t considered trustworthy. TracePage 3 is necessary for some of the other tools to operate.
If you’re interested in Trace’s performance, click the Statistics button. 1 You can view today’s chart, 2 or collate data from as far back as a week ago via the drop-down menu. 3 If you’d rather not have the data gathered, you can switch it off by disabling Protection Statistics.
in the Trace Options section of the Settings. 4
