The dangers of the Internet are well publicised and there are always stories in the news and technology blogs about the latest scam or virus infiltrating computers everywhere. There are multiple software solutions available to fight back against those who choose to misuse the power of the web, one of the most recent being a modification to browsers, fighting identity theft at the source.
Private browsing is the name given to one of the latest additions many popular browsers have already started to incorporate. The premise of private browsing is to clear the browser of any personal information or information that has been stored in the browsers cache.
Private browsing has been developed to not store or retain information such as visited pages, cookies and download lists. These may seem fairly obvious things to disregard, but there are other pieces of information such as forms and search bar entries that are often stored in browsers which are stored for the convenience of the user i.e. for auto completion purposes that could also lead to the divulgence of a person's name and address. Many browsers will also cache whole and parts of web pages, private browsing also aims to eradicate these files when a browsing session is ended.
Recent studies by leading web security experts have found however, that private browsing may not be as private as many users believe it to be. With many people using third party add-ons with their browsers these days these add-ons can actually compromise the effectiveness of the private browsing functionality. There were also conflicts found when those with private browsing enabled in their browser visited secure sites, in some cases personal data was found to literally 'leak out' of the browser.
If you regularly use public computers there are precautions you can take in addition to enabling private browsing to make you experience as safe as possible. Clear your browsing history, any temporary internet files as well as closing the browser when you have finished will help remove any lurking pieces of personal information.
Relying solely on software to keep your personal information secure whilst browsing the web is not the best solution. It is better than taking no precautions, but to keep your security at its optimum when online enable private browsing but also take the time to check anything that private browsing may have missed.
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