Your online fingerprint or user agent string: This data is comprised of all the information your computer sends out to web servers while requesting a website.The web would be very annoying to use without them, but cookies are also sometimes used to track users for advertising purposes. Cookies: These are small text files generated by sites to save, among other things, your preferences on sites.Things like Google Analytics or the ubiquitous “Like” button could, in theory, track your browsing activities on behalf of those companies. Accounts you’re signed into: Companies like Instagram or Facebook use your data to track your activity on those respective sites, along with other webpages, thanks to embedded code.Any site you visit can log your IP address, which could later identify you. Your IP address: This is a series of numbers generally set by your internet service provider (ISP) that are necessary for accessing the internet.To understand how these tools work, you first have to understand what can be tracked: But which of these tools actually work? And how do they work? The truth is, different tools prevent different kinds of tracking. Advice varies from getting a VPN to disabling cookies to utilizing the private browsing mode within the browser of your choice. When it comes to browsing the web without leaving a trail, there is a lot of noise out there.
