What website owners know about you

One of the most controversial IT subjects today is internet privacy. Tech companies that provide their users innovative and convenient products rely on data aggregation for further progress and development. While the amount of collected information has increased exponentially, so did the concern for user security and anonymity.

Today, voice activation software, sensors, video cameras, and various IoT collect and store enough information to raise concerns. While technology won't go away anytime soon due to its convenience, it encourages companies to aggregate as much data as possible.

 Even a modern website collects an absurd amount of information about its visitors. Pages have different iterations of a website to tailor the best content to a user based on their IP address. Website localization, cookies, and other similar tools want to create the perfect, personalized experience for each visitor. Some users do not mind data collection because it makes browsing far more convenient, but every website should warn visitors and allow them to opt-out and protect privacy.

In this article, we will focus on how much data websites collect about their visitors. A web page owner has a multitude of ways to identify and store information about its visitors. Our goal is to bring knowledge to a casual internet user and present useful tools that can help preserve privacy and anonymity online. For example, you can find a good proxy provider and tweak your browsing experience to give up as little information as possible. Smartproxy is a legitimate provider that offers various proxy services for businesses and individuals, as well as many blog articles with tips to preserve security and anonymity on the internet. If you find a good proxy provider, you will find new ways to protect your network identity.

What is a user agent?

Every HTTP request you send to a web server has a line of information attached to it - a user-agent. If you do not tweak anything about your settings, it can give a lot of information about your system. Different browsers change these messages, and a single line of code might not be too revealing at first glance - only the version of a browser, screen size and an operating system. The truth is if a website owner notices the same user-agent connecting through the same IP multiple times, they can recognize you in the future.

Fortunately, just like you can change your IP with the help of a proxy provider, you can mask your real user-agent by changing your browser settings. There are also browser extensions that can help you shift between user agents without much hassle.

 Change your IP address

Every website you visit can know your approximate location via an IP address. If you feel uncomfortable with sharing this knowledge, you can choose from many tools that help you cover up network identity.

A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is the most advertised tool for protecting your privacy online. With a VPN, you can hide your IP and encrypt your connection at the same time, stopping third parties on a public network from peeking at the transferred data. However, no matter how good the service is, it still has its downsides. There are far less expensive solutions to change your IP, and the changed address will work for your entire internet connection.

If you want a cheaper and more adaptive solution, get yourself an intermediary server from a reliable proxy provider. Depending on the service you choose, you will get a fairer deal and the ability to use multiple IPs for different browsers. You can choose from different types of proxies to suit your needs, but if the goal is just to change your address, choose a datacenter proxy. They will preserve your internet speed and give access to most websites on the internet. The only problem occurs if you visit frequently targeted, suspicious websites or competitors that try to avoid scraping. Datacenter IPs are easy to recognize, but for regular browsing, you will be able to continue your activities without interruptions. If you want more anonymity for automated tasks like web scraping, residential proxies are a better alternative because they come from real personal devices supplied by internet service providers, therefore they are less likely to end up in web server blacklists.

Alas, no matter how much protection you use, a website will still know a lot about you. Even if you use a proxy server or a VPN, paired with a changed user-agent, a sizable digital footprint will be recorded. The biggest problem with internet user privacy are social media websites. If you have an account, none of these safety precautions will help you avoid leaking private data. The best we can do is utilize these tools to minimize the digital footprint. While it may not be much, it provides a decent amount of protection and encourages the tech community to continue pushing for privacy and humane technology. Stay safe!