Best Security Extensions For Chrome
The Internet is a dangerous place, where hackers and corporations collect your data and profile you. Luckily, extensions can help protect your privacy and improve your browsing experience.
Many different extensions are available, but it’s important to find one that works well and is secure. Here are some tried and true extensions that can help: Disconnect, Click&Clean, and PixelBlock.
Avast Online Security & Privacy
Avast Online Security & Privacy protects your browser and the websites you visit against real-time online threats. It identifies suspicious sites and warns you of dangerous phishing pages, thanks to the Avast community of over 400 million users. It also blocks intrusive tracking cookies and helps you optimize your privacy settings across popular online platforms – guided by the Privacy Advisor.
Besides phishing scanning, it also checks websites for malware. The extension has a risk rating for every website, with green representing safe sites and red being unsafe. It can also block trackers and switch to Bank Mode automatically when you go to a banking page.
The extension collects context data and sends it to Avast’s servers. Although the company explains this in their privacy policy, it’s not clear how long they keep this data.
Click&Clean
Click&Clean is a popular browser extension that deletes browsing history and cached files. It also deletes cookies, saved forms data and website App Caches. It also closes windows and tabs and cleans the system. It’s available for free and is safe to use, but it can be annoying with pop-up messages.
The extension can be configured to automatically clear private data when you close Chrome or manually by clicking the icon. You can also set the time interval for the clean and select specific types of data to be deleted.
The extension requires a large number of permissions, and it may violate your privacy. It’s important to do your research before installing an extension in the Chrome Web Store, including reading reviews and examining the code.
Disconnect
Disconnect is our favorite anti-tracking extension because of its up to date tracking cookie database, page load optimization, and secure WiFi encryption. It is also open-source, which helps ensure that it is always working correctly and for your benefit. Disconnect Premium (available in iOS, Android, and desktop) includes the browser extension, plus many other protections like a smart VPN and location control.
It prevents Facebook, Google, and Twitter from following you as you surf across the internet. It also routes your search through Disconnect’s servers, so your’real’ IP address is not given to the website you’re searching on. This prevents advertisers from building up a profile of you to target advertisements. Disconnect is based on the Collusion Firefox add-on. It works in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Opera.
PixelBlock
PixelBlock is a Gmail extension that blocks people from tracking when you open their emails. It does so by detecting tracking pixels in your messages and blocking them. It also displays a red eye to alert you to the presence of these pixels.
Other extensions exist for this purpose, such as Ugly Email and Trocker, but they have a few problems. For example, they are based on old Chrome extension technology that will be phased out in the coming year, and their notifications don’t always appear.
PixelBlock stores personal information that can identify you as an individual, such as your name, email address, home contact information and other similar information in a secure system. This information is only accessible by PixelBlock’s personnel in order to provide you with the products and services you requested, or in accordance with applicable privacy legislation.
NoScript
The NoScript web browser extension is a security and privacy tool that blocks unnecessary and potentially nefarious scripts on the sites you visit. It’s a default-deny tool, but you can relax restrictions per-site and per-session – though that requires rigor and discipline.
NoScript’s most important features – such as the ability to assign trust levels on the fly – remain the same in the new WebExtensions API, although the Chrome port doesn’t yet support synchronous inspection of page assets (i.e. the
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