8 ways to browse the web privately using Safari on the Apple Mac

Everything you do and everywhere you go on the internet, someone somewhere is tracking your activities. Here’s how to browse privately and stop the trackers from watching what you do online.

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There are many reasons for someone wanting to hide their internet activities and it is not always because they are doing things that aren’t legal, like downloading pirated software, music and movies. Advertisers want to know more about you so that they can target you with adverts you cannot resist. That can be irritating and some sites are just advertising hell. Some ads are necessary for sites to earn an income to pay the bills, but some advertisers go too far.

Not all tracking is bad and websites want to know which articles interest people, so they track the number of views each page gets and how long people spend reading them. This is so they can create more pages that people like to read and less of those that bore them. This type of tracking leads to better websites.

Some people just don’t like the thought of their activities being scrutinised by unknown people and companies on the internet. Whatever your motivation for wanting to browse the web privately and secretly, there are ways to do this on your Apple Mac.

(Also read 15 ways to icrease the security on your Apple Mac)

1 Use a Safari Private Window

Start Safari, go to the File menu and select New Private Window. This opens a new window and in it, you have no history, no cookies, no internet data. If you have a website that you normally log straight into, such as Facebook, Twitter, and similar places, enter the URL into a Private Window and see what happens. You won’t be logged in because in a Private Window you are unknown and have no history of ever visiting these sites. You will be prompted to sign up or sign in.

Wherever you go, it is like the first time you have ever visited the site and it knows nothing about you. As you browse the web, a history will begin to build, but when the Private Window is closed, everything you did is erased - the sites you visited, the cookies they stored, ads tracked and so on. It is all wiped. Private browsing increases privacy, so use it whenever you can.

2 Increase Safari’s privacy settings

If you don’t want to use a Private Window for browsing, you can increase the privacy in a normal Safari browsing window. Go to the Safari menu and select Preferences. Select the Privacy tab. Tick the checkbox Prevent cross-site tracking. This is often carried out by advertisers using cookies to track you as you browse the web. This stops it.

Selecting Block all cookies stops sites storing anything on your Mac. However, it is a bit extreme and it will stop some websites from working. Try it and see what happens. You might need to turn it off for some websites though.

Selecting Block all cookies stops sites storing anything on your Mac and is great for privacy. However, it is a bit extreme and it will stop some websites from working. Try it and see what happens. You might need to turn it off for some websites an it is a pain to keep turning this setting on and off as you browse the web. Leave the checkbox clear.

Click Manage Website Data and a a list of websites that have stored data on the computer is displayed. It is mainly cookies and by entering ads into the search box, you can see many advertisers. To increase your privacy, they can be selected and deleted. However, they will be back as soon as adverts are encountered on the web.

3 Remove extensions

Extensions can be added to Safari to add extra features, such as buttons for sharing content, storing notes, checking your spelling and grammar, and so on. Go to Safari > Preferences > Extensions to see what is installed.

These extensions have access to the websites you visit, the content of the pages and you browsing history. An extension could share this information with its developer, which raises privacy issues. Go to Safari, Preferences, Extensions. If there are extensions you can live without (none are really necessary), select them and uninstall them. The fewer extensions you have, the better your privacy will be.

4 Use a VPN

A VPN or Virtual Private Network is a way of encrypting internet traffic so that no-one can spy on you. A secure encrypted connection is made between the Mac and the VPN provider, so whatever websites you visit and whatever content you view cannot be seen by anyone else. This is perfect for public Wi-Fi hotspots where you don’t know whether the person on the next table at the cafe is a hacker trying to spy on your activities. It also prevents the Wi-Fi hotspot owner from knowing what you are accessing.

It can be used to access websites that are normally blocked. Pinterest, for example, is one of the most popular websites in the world, but it is blocked at some public Wi-Fi hotspots. Using a VPN unblocks it. A VPN does not make you anonymous on the internet, but it does add a great deal of privacy and security. It severely limits what information websites and services know about you and it prevents eavesdropping on your activities by those around you.

Ivacy VPN software

There are many VPN services and a Google or Bing search will list lots of them. Avira Phantom VPN is free if you don’t need much data. You get 500 MB of internet data each month, but when I tried it a while back I got an extra 500 GB after registering for free. It’ll be gone in a day if you watch online video though, so limit your activities to those that use less data.

A paid VPN is much better and there are usually no limits to the amount of data you can access. You can browse all day on them and you get a huge list of countries with servers. Pick a server in another city or country and you appear to be there, which is great for privacy and for accessing local services.

I used NordVPN for serveral years and found it to be excellent, so I always recommend it. It is easy to use, has thousands of servers to choose from and a good range of features. There are often money saving deals for one, two or even three year plans and the longer you sign up, the cheaper it is. See the latest NordVPN deals. Other VPN software worth considering is PureVPN, Ivacy VPN and Surfshark VPN.

5 Use a proxy server

A proxy server acts as an intermediary when you want to access a website. Let’s say you want to access rawinfopages.com. Safari would send the URL request to the proxy server, that would request the web page, and the page page would be passed back to you by the proxy server. It is the proxy server that gets the web page from the web server, so the website sees only the proxy server and not your computer.

It’s like asking your friend Bob to buy some milk for you. Bob buys the milk from a shop and gives it to you. The shop only sees Bob and doesn’t know the milk is really for you. A proxy server therefore adds a degree of privacy to browsing the web, fetching pages and passing them on to you.

There are free and paid proxy servers. The free ones tend to be over-subscribed and overused by the public, so they are sometimes slow. Be aware that all your web traffic goes through the proxy server, so it is best to use a company that can be trusted. Don’t shop, bank or do similar things on a free proxy.

A search for proxy servers at Google or Bing will produce lots of results. Some sites maintain lists of free proxies, but paid proxies are much better. VPN companies that specialise in secure and anonymous browsing sometimes provide free proxies.

With a free proxy server, you go to the website, such as Hide.me, Hidester or HideMyAss and enter the URL of the website you want to visit. You may see adverts as these are VPN companies, but the proxy is free.

6 Don't reveal your location

Some websites want to know your location. There may be good reasons for this, such as selecting the right currency in an online store, but some websites do not need to know and they may just be nosey.

Protect your privacy by going to Safari > Preferences > Websites. Select Location on the left and Ask in the bottom right corner. If a website tries to discover your location, a message will appear on the screen informing you and you then have the opportunity to allow it or deny it.

7 Use a private search engine

Some search engines track your activities and you might want to use a more private one like DuckDuckGo. This search engine is pretty good. Google is better, but it is a good idea to set the default to DuckDuckGo for privacy and then only if you cannot find what you are searching for, go to Google. Go to Safari > Preferences > Search and select DuckDuckGo for the search engine.

8 Limit the browsing history

Some things, like Extensions for example, can read your browsing history. For this reason, you might want to limit the range it can access. Go to Safari > Preferences > General and set the history as you prefer. Click Remove history items and select from one day to one year. It is your choice.

Intro image by Thomas Breher from Pixabay