Private navigation: know everything about the discreet mode of your browser

All browsers offer a mode of navigation, called private, which is supposed to let you surf the web incognito. But what's the real value of this incognito mode? A 2018 study by the Universities of Chicago and Hanover showed that 40% of participants felt that their location could not be identified when using incognito mode. In addition, 22% felt that the government and their ISPs could not track their Internet search activities using this mode. Unfortunately, this is not true: let us remember what this mode allows you to do and what solutions really exist to make you anonymous on the net.

Private navigation … Local

In reality, it is only your browsing history and pre-recorded data in online forms that are not stored on the computer. Someone who comes after you on the same computer will actually see nothing of the sites you have visited. Note that private mode remains interesting to avoid too many targeted ads, by deleting cookies after each of your sessions.

Despite this, the websites you visit incognito keep your IP address and location recorded in order to identify yourself, whether you use this mode or not. So Google Chrome explains, among other things:

Furthermore, this mode does not in any way protect you from the risk of your data being intercepted by a hacker, if spyware is already present on your computer. Thus, private browsing mode does not make you invisible on the Internet and does not allow you to protect yourself against spying attempts.

So what are the real solutions for truly private navigation?

Use a VPN instead

To actually navigate privately, you will prefer to use a VPN (Virtual private Network). Internet traffic in this case goes through a secure connection and the data is encrypted, making it difficult to intercept. The location is scrambled in the same way: the IP becomes that of the VPN, with the possibility of giving the impression of navigating from another country.

There are many free VPNs to try, such as TunnelBear for example, but they offer limited services and the purchase of a paid VPN may be more appropriate (SurfShark or ExpressVpn for example). However, your VPN must have a No logs policy before choosing a subscription; that is, it does not keep any record of your activity.

In fact, some VPN might as well practice selling our data without our knowledge and for real anonymity some prefer to turn to networks like TOR.

The TOR solution

TOR is the acronym for the onion router. Developed by the U.S. Navy, it avoided the risk of theft of sensitive data and was released in the form of free software when the army began using its own VPN.TOR system is a multi-proxy network that uses the connections of all its users to mask the IP of the original user. With several million users, it becomes impossible to determine a unique IP address. The main reason why this network is used, is to prevent governments and businesses from collecting data on browsing habits and websites visited by Internet users. TOR is therefore useful to protect its anonymity but it may be better to also use a VPN to keep your other private activities, especially when downloading and streaming.

Combine the two

Not all VPN are suitable for TOR. VPN editors do not systematically offer the onion over VPN option to benefit from the TOR browser and many of them may significantly slow your connection. The best VPN pay, such as ExpressVpn, CyberGhost, SurfShark or NordVpn, as they are more suitable in terms of compatibility, connection speed and encryption.

By combining private navigation locally, these two solutions therefore allow you to move towards anonymity, often sacrificing a certain speed of connection and of course the price of the subscription for an efficient VPN.