What do you think is the most important program on your computer? Of course, this is a very subjective question, but I think that for most users it is the browser. Why do I think that?
- A web browser gives us easy access to services from the Internet, be it video streaming, social media or search engine services.
- Many native apps, i.e. apps written specifically for the OS platform of your computer, are now also available as web apps without having to install the apps locally, such as the productivity app “Trello” or the text processing app “Microsoft Word”.
- Last but not least, browsers are often used as “utilities” to accomplish other tasks, by searching for information on the web, which you then incorporate into your further work.
Therefore, it is important to pay a little more attention to your browser than most of us do. The first and key step is to configure the browser according to your needs.
The most important plug-ins for your browser
For this configuration, adblockers or tracking blocker plug-ins play an important role. In fact, operators of ad-supported content, which is certainly the majority of content on the Internet, are well aware of the importance of your browser for your digital life. In order to be able to finance supposedly free content for users, their behaviors are tracked and then analyzed in order to be able to place even more targeted advertisements. In itself, there is nothing wrong with this, because content does not produce itself and the creators of this content should also be able to make a living from their work. However, I think there are better ways to monetize content than just displaying banner ads and passing on data to third-party providers. Therefore, it’s legitimate not to make it too easy for tracking services to get their hands on your data. Therefore, be sure to install adblockers and tracking blocker plug-ins for your browsers. Your browser itself also offers more advanced tracking protection than the default settings. Firefox from Mozilla is particularly noteworthy here. But almost every other browser offers the possibility to restrict tracking significantly compared to the default settings directly after installing the browser.
I will not give recommendations for specific adblockers or tracking blocker plug-ins at this point, as they change frequently and the focus of my blog is not on analyzing tools, but on the strategic use of tool categories and you developing your own system for digital organization. However, when installing these plug-ins, as when installing any software, you should analyze exactly what you are installing. That means: Check what other users say about this software and especially check how the program monetizes itself. Because you don’t want to install a tracking blocker that blocks tracking of certain services, but presents all your search history on a silver platter to services that are funding this plugin …
Different browsers for different tasks
Most of you probably don’t only use the browser that was delivered upon installation of your operating system. Many have two or more alternatives in use on their computer. Still, most users don’t have a systematic way of knowing when they use which browser. I recommend, especially if you work a lot with web apps and/ or tracking protection is important to you, to use different browsers for different tasks. Even if the focus of most browsers is the same, they all have different advantages: Some are faster at running certain programs or playing videos, others have a more advanced feature set for web development, etc.
So consider if it makes sense for you to work with multiple browsers and which browsers might be best for which tasks. My example: I use one browser for email, and that’s for email accounts that I only need sporadically and don’t want to connect to my email client. I also use the same browser for online shopping, because I can create the many accounts including email address, which are usually needed for online stores, right in this browser. For web development I use an other browser, another for web searches and another for entertainment, i.e. watching videos and listening to music.
Keep favorites bar and bookmarks up to date
If you work a lot with bookmarks, it is a good idea to export bookmarks once a month in a file (any browser can do this) and save them to a cloud repo. You can also do this in an automated way. This way you can access your favorites from other computers and don’t have to search for everything again and again.
I like to arrange bookmarks ONLY in the favorites bar and within folders. Do what makes the most sense to you here, or use established folder structures that you do for the rest of your files,… in a next blogpost I’ll make a suggestion on how such a folder structure can work. I find all alternative categorizations other than on the browser’s favorites bar impractical. And if a browser regularly gets used for presentation purposes (like demos in web conferences), then the favorites bar can also be hidden or you could also use a dedicated browser without bookmarks for such a use case.
Browsers on mobile devices
Unfortunately, browsers from the same manufacturer cannot be configured the same way on all devices once you are on mobile devices. For example, the Firefox browser in iOS cannot install add-ons and you are very much dependent on how Apple defines anti-tracking protection … Therefore, I recommend to use mobile browsers only for occasional queries and to regularly delete the browsing history including the many cookies or have them deleted automatically. After all, mobile devices are almost always with you everywhere, which allows extensive “profiling” for the advertising market: you check the opening hours of a restaurant and then look for flights for your next vacation. The next time you open a video in the same browser, you get a bunch of videos about the same vacation destination and recipe suggestions for the cuisine of the restaurant you are looking for … Unfortunately, this cannot be avoided without tracking protection.
However, this limitation of mobile browser usage does have one important restriction: If you don’t have to maintain social media accounts professionally, I recommend to remove social media apps from your mobile devices immediately and rather log in to the respective platforms via browser, if you absolutely have to access these platforms via mobile (more on this topic will follow in a next blog post). However, remember to log out of your profile again, otherwise the service you are using will continue to collect usable information from your search activity in the background.
Checklist:
- Think about the purposes for which you use web browsers on your computer and write all these purposes on a sheet of paper
- Form categories of all these use cases by circling similar uses using the same color and consider: Which category is sensitive (such as online banking, online shopping, etc.)? Which is less sensitive and not very power-intensive (such as online research)? And which is performance-intensive (some web apps, streaming… )?
- Decide which browser you want to use for which category based on sensitivity and performance (for example, Firefox is good for sensitive tasks, Chrome is better for performance intensive tasks)
- Install an Ad-Blocker and a Tracking protection extension on each of your browsers, also I would check in the settings of each of your browsers for security features (like “preventing password storage”, each browser has inherently more or less settings available to make your web usage more secure)
- If you work a lot with bookmarks, export them regularly (about once a month) and store them in a cloud storage, so you always have the possibility to swap browsers or if you work with multiple computers, keep those in sync