With cybercriminals and hackers getting craftier online, it’s becoming more important for you to protect your online privacy. One of the best ways to do this is by staying anonymous while browsing. If they cannot track and find you, they cannot attack you.
Anonymous browsing gives you a shield to your digital footprint from unnecessary scrutiny. So, how can you stay anonymous while browsing and protect yourself? Read on to find out. 
Why Is It Important to Browse the Web Anonymously?
With the digital era quickly closing into the privacy error, people have the sudden urge to anonymously browse on the web. Most of the reasons surround privacy and security. They include:
- Protect Personal Information: Anonymous browsing prevents the exposure of personal data during online activities. All this improves your privacy.
- Bypassing Content Restrictions: Censorship and geo-restrictions can prevent you from accessing certain online content or pages. Anonymous browsing helps you circumvent all these and give you unrestricted access to all your desired content.
- Enhanced Privacy: On regular browsing, ISPs (Internet Service Providers) track your activities online. If you do not wish to be tracked or monitored, consider anonymous browsing.
- Avoid Targeted Advertisements: Have you ever noticed an increase in certain ads after searching for particular items? Well, these are targeted ads. With anonymous browsing, you minimize the occurrence of these intrusive ads.
4 Tips on How to Browse the Web Anonymously
1. Use a VPN (Virtual Private Network) Service
One of the best ways to make yourself anonymous is by using a VPN service. While VPNs do not completely make you anonymous, they encrypt your online traffic from hackers and snoopers. By using a VPN, you establish a digital connection between your computer and the VPN provider’s remote server.
This creates a point-to-point tunnel that encrypts all your data and masks your IP address. It is your first step to being anonymous and untraceable.
2. Secure Your Email Service
It’s no lie that we are fully dependent on search engines such as Google. For starters, most people use Gmail as the primary email service due to its ease of access and use. While it has its benefits, Google keeps all the emails on the servers. If you want to stay anonymous, consider using alternative email services such as ProtonMail.
This provider has end-to-end encryption with open-source code. Even better, the service is free for iOS, Android, and all web users.
3. Stay Off Social Media
How much information do you share online, especially on social media? At a time when people have an urge for approval and acceptance, most people find themselves posting photos and personally identifiable information (PII). If something is happening in your life and you don’t want people to know, posting it on social media is not a great idea.
While sharing one thing on social media may not seem like a big issue, it can become detrimental when coupled with other shared personal details. Hackers can use this information to build a picture and even gain more details on you. It makes it harder for you to stay anonymous. 
4. Check for App Permissions and Privacy Policies
Everyone with a mobile device has apps. Even though these mobile apps make our lives easier, they usually ask for more permissions than they require. Most of the additional ones extract personal details and take the data back to the app owners and developers.
If an app is asking for access to your microphone or location, you can be sure that it records things and tracks your location. Others want to access your address book, and you have to wonder whether they need it.
Whether you are on iOS or Android devices, dig deep into your settings and turn off some of those permissions. We know that browsing and cookies are inevitable. These are small pieces of data sent to your browsers by every website you visit.
The cookies help websites remember information about your visit. However, they can be a data collection scheme that alters your efforts to stay anonymous. Deny all cookies and go through privacy policies.
Summary
While browsing and staying anonymous online can be daunting to achieve, there are a few things that can enhance your chances. Start by using a VPN and securing your email service so that you are not tracked.
Even though you may have the urge to post everything about your life online, be very careful so you are not giving away PII to hackers and cybercriminals. Don’t forget to check your app permissions and privacy policies.