How to improve your online privacy and security in Google Chrome

Google Chrome is by far the biggest browser in the game – and the most popular product in this game is data. Every time you browse the web, your personal data becomes a commodity, whether you willingly or unwittingly hand it over to a number of vendors, or a hacker slips through the cracks and steals your information. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to secure your Google account, and not just with Chrome’s new biweekly updates.

Of course, when it comes to privacy, using Chrome might start off on the wrong foot. Although they have many security advantages, Google’s privacy measures are imperfect compared to a browser like Firefox; Your Google account collects a lot of information about you every day, including app usage and browser history. However, if you’re already set up with Google, there are steps you can take to improve your security.

First, head to the three dots at the top right of your browser, scroll down to Settings and head towards Privacy and security. Right away, you’ll want to press Third-party cookies and select Block third-party cookiesthen turn on Do not follow. This is just a request, so sites that receive the request when you enter it can choose to acknowledge or ignore this request at their own discretion.

Before we look at more settings in this area, there are more privacy-specific options to check out elsewhere. If you click on your Google profile icon instead of the three dots and go to Manage your Google account > Data & privacyyou can deactivate Web and app activitywhich is another setting used by Google to extract more from your data. Once you’ve done that, you can also disable Chronology, which is the setting Google uses to track your location history, as well as Customize searchwhich collects data to tailor search results and AI responses to your business. To further depersonalize advertisements (i.e. further protection of your data against Google’s operating methods), you can deactivate personalized advertisements in My Ad Center.

When it comes to security, whether it’s Chrome’s Gemini Nano scam protection or its Safety Check review system, the browser is much more robust here than when it comes to privacy. First, go back to three-dot menu > Settings > Privacy & Securitywhere you can click Go to security checkwhich will analyze any security issues you might encounter and tell you how to resolve them. In addition to immediate problems, it will tell you if you’re reusing too many passwords and if you need a Chrome update. Chrome Security Check will also run constantly in the background, keeping you alert for threats as they arise.

While you’re in the Privacy and security area, you should take a look at the Secure browsing section. There are three types of Safe Browsing, with the standard default protection being constantly vigilant against potentially dangerous websites, downloads and extensions. Here you can enable Enhanced Protection to add a layer of AI-based security to your search, although you can forgo it if you don’t like AI-laden fanaticism. Just below you can also enable Always use secure connectionswhich will grant advance warning if a site does not support secure connections.