I have talked about Ad Blocking and the future of advertising in the past. But if you are tired of being tracked and want to stop all those crazy auto-playing video ads, pop-under ads, and just do not feel right with companies understanding what you are doing in aggregate, what can you do about it?
Here is a quick guide that will help you shield yourself on your laptop / PC.
1) Use an Ad Blocker for your Internet Browser: AdBlock Plus
2) Use a Popunder Blocker: Poper Blocker
3) Opt out of Behavior Tracking: DIGITAL ADVERTISING ALLIANCE (DAA) SELF-REGULATORY PROGRAM
4) Use Spyware safety programs: I like Spyware Blaster and Spybot and use both.
5) Use a good Antivirus: I really love Avast’s Free Antivirus and run it in Silent Gaming Mode so it never bothers me.
6) Look into your browser settings: for example, with Google Chrome, type chrome://settings/ for the browser location, click “Show advanced settings” at the bottom, and check your Privacy settings. In particular, you might want to follow all of my settings, though there has been recent news about whether the FCC will force companies to honor the “Do Not Track” setting.
7) More Privacy Protection: use Privacy Badger from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
8) Manage your Google Settings: Go into your Dashboard and Activity Controls and go through your settings carefully to make sure you know what they do. By the way, if you click on those links and wonder how come you were logged in directly, this is not because I know your account information. It is because you are already logged into Google.
The steps above will be a great start to becoming more safe in your PC usage. An additional step you can take is to use a VPN (Virtual Private Network) such as Private Internet Access, which will help you from having your internet traffic being snooped on.
If you have any tips, I would love to hear them and add them to this article, so do leave a comment below!
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