How to browse with less tracking

Checked on 7 October 2026 against each maker's own pages (listed at the end). Browsers and extensions change: if a step no longer matches what you see, trust the maker's page and tell us.

No single step stops all tracking, and none of them hides your IP address from the sites you visit. Each step below removes a part. Tracker Watch Lens shows the effect on every page: open its panel and look at Your protection ("stopped N of the M tracking services met here").

1. Use your browser's own protection

This is the step that needs no installation.

  • Firefox: Enhanced Tracking Protection is on by default (Standard). Standard blocks social media trackers, cross-site tracking cookies, cryptominers and fingerprinters, and keeps every cookie to the site that created it (Total Cookie Protection). Strict also blocks tracking content (hidden in ads, videos and other embedded content) in all windows, not only private ones, and adds Bounce Tracking Protection. Strict can break parts of some sites, such as embedded videos, comments or login boxes; you can turn the protection off for one site from the shield icon. Menu: Settings > Privacy and security > Enhanced Tracking Protection.
  • Chrome: Settings > Privacy and security > Third-party cookies > Block third-party cookies. Google says this blocks the cookies of other sites unless you add exceptions, and that some sites that rely on them may not work.
  • Safari (Mac): Safari > Settings > Privacy > Prevent cross-site tracking. Apple says it stops third-party content providers from tracking you across websites, and that Safari presents a simplified view of your system to make fingerprinting harder.
  • Brave: Brave Shields are on by default on every site; Brave says they block trackers and cross-site cookies and protect against fingerprinting.

2. Add a blocker

A blocker stops requests to lists of thousands of tracking and advertising domains before they leave your browser, also before you answer a cookie banner. Install only from the official store pages, and use only one blocker at a time.

  • uBlock Origin (free, open source): available for Firefox, Edge and Opera. Its author says the version for the Chrome Web Store was removed on 31 August 2026, when Chrome dropped the older extension format (Manifest V2).
  • uBlock Origin Lite (same project, new format): available for Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari. Its author says it is lighter but less flexible than uBlock Origin; it ships EasyList, EasyPrivacy and other lists.
  • Privacy Badger (EFF, a digital-rights non-profit): learns what to block by watching which domains collect identifiers across sites, instead of using a hand-made list. Available for Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera and Brave.

3. Add our list (optional)

Our files trackerwatch-verified.txt and trackerwatch-full.txt list the tracking services we measured on news sites. They only do something when a blocker that accepts added lists reads them (for example uBlock Origin). Our list is small: use it on top of the blocker's own lists, not instead of them.

Lens can also block, with the buttons at the top of its panel or in Settings and your data > Blocking: it stops the services of our list without another extension. Its extended option adds the domain rules of EasyPrivacy (by The EasyList authors) and, in Firefox, trackers disguised as the site itself. A dedicated blocker still covers more (it also uses all the path rules of its lists and scripts that neutralise trackers and ads).

The strictest option, site only, also stops every script, frame and connection from other sites on the page you visit (their images, styles and fonts still load). It catches trackers that no list knows yet, but it breaks parts of many sites: comments, maps, chats, videos from players other than YouTube or Vimeo, sometimes the whole page. Cookie banners, subscription walls, sign-in with Google or Apple, Stripe and PayPal payments, captchas and YouTube or Vimeo videos are allowed from the start. When something is missing, open Lens's panel on that site: it lists the other sites that were stopped, each with an "Allow on this site" button (the tracker lists still apply to what you allow), or pause blocking there.

Separately, Block ads (off by default) uses EasyList (by The EasyList authors) to stop ad requests and hide the empty space ads leave. It works with or without the options above. Some sites ask you to turn off ad blocking; pausing blocking on a site from the panel also pauses this there. Some sites hide their content until you turn off ad blocking; when Lens sees such a message it says so in a small notice with a button to pause blocking on that site (you can resume it from the panel).

Lists only know the trackers someone has already found. With Learn trackers from their behaviour on (off by default), Lens also notes third parties that are on no list but act like trackers: they receive a cookie that looks like an identifier, or read a canvas to fingerprint your browser. One seen doing so on three different sites is learned: with Block trackers on, one that read a canvas is blocked, and one learned from its cookies loses its cookies but keeps loading (so a shared login or image server does not break). Lens keeps no site names for this, and you can forget any of them.

4. Answer cookie banners with "reject"

Lens can do it for you: turn on Reject banners (panel or settings, off by default). It presses the reject button of known banners and shows a short notice. Where the only refusal is paying, it does not answer: with Block trackers on, accepting then lets far fewer trackers through.

Where a banner offers a free refusal, rejecting usually means fewer services. The difference can be large: in one test with Lens in a real browser, on a Spanish news site, accepting took the page from 8 to 68 tracking services. Some sites only offer "accept or pay"; there, accepting is what opens the door to most of the tracking. Lens's Your own banner test measures this on the sites you choose.

5. Send a "do not sell or share" signal

Global Privacy Control (GPC) tells sites you do not want your data sold or shared. The GPC project lists Brave, Firefox, the DuckDuckGo browser and Privacy Badger among those that send it. It is a legal request in California and some other US states; under the GDPR it expresses a general request to limit sale or sharing. It does not block anything by itself. Lens shows whether your browser sends it ("What your browser told this site").

6. Search and accounts

  • Searching while signed in can link your searches to your account, depending on your settings. Lens shows, on a results page, whether you are signed in and links to the engine's own pages to see, delete or download what it keeps.
  • In the EU, the EEA and the UK you can ask any company for a copy of the personal data it holds about you (GDPR, article 15).

7. Beyond the browser

  • Filtering DNS (for example a router-level blocker such as Pi-hole, or a DNS service with blocklists) stops tracking domains for every app and device on your network, not only the browser.
  • A VPN or Tor hides your IP address from the sites you visit; a VPN moves that trust to the VPN provider.

What none of this stops

  • Tracking done on the site's own servers, or through its own domain names, which looks like the site itself.
  • What you tell a site by signing in, and what a site shares with its partners on its side.
  • Your IP address being seen by every server you contact, unless you use a VPN or Tor.

Sources (read on 7 October 2026)

See what your own browser reveals with the Browser check: it shows, detail by detail, what a script on any page can read, and what you can do about each one.

Also on this site: our filter lists and the blocking-list test, which measures how much a list removes on the sites we follow.