Apple Safari: How To Make Private Browsing More Private

Apple's Safari “Private Browsing” feature can even be made more private with just a few easy steps.

Private browsing appears to be a popular thing among many internet users nowadays. A quick search of “private browsing” on Google returns about 423 million results in less than a second, indicating a growing need to be able to browse the internet freely and without having to deal with trackers and others spying on what they're doing on the net.

The desire to browse in private has become so great that browsers have decided to offer such a feature. While the feature varies in name across various browsers, all of them are meant to do the same things: prevent cookies from being saved, stop browsing histories from being recorded and keep users anonymous on the web.

That latter thing, however, isn't really what's happening. While private browsing features, like Safari's private browsing mode, might prevent others from seeing a list of websites a user visited while browsing in private, it won't stop websites and other people on the internet from trying to profile a user's identity based on what they actually searched for.

Internet service providers could also keep a record of the user's online activity even when using Private Browsing Mode. Basically, private browsing isn't actually completely private.

That said, there are a few things Safari users can do to up the privacy when surfing the net using private browsing Mode.

• First, users should try to use secure search engines like DuckDuckGo. This search engine doesn't keep a record of search data and doesn't track users. It basically gives users the tracker-free internet experience they want.
• Second, activate Prevent Cross-site Tracking. This feature prevents websites from passing information to one another so that they won't be able to profile users based on their activities in other sites.
• Lastly, users should close private browsing tabs after browsing. This prevents anyone, even the user, from reopening the websites to see what's there.

Meanwhile, Apple recently introduced improvements to Safari via the macOS Big Sur.

The browser, Apple said, has been upgraded to offer new features, including improved privacy, faster webpage loading, a built-in translator and more ways to personalize the Safari experience to meet the user's demands.

One new feature called Privacy Report provides “added visibility into how Safari protects browsing activity across the web.” It also allows users to choose which websites a Safari extension can work with and prevent tools, such as data breach password monitoring, from revealing the user's password information to anybody, including Apple.