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Ad Blockers, Password Managers, VPNs, and everything else you need to know about

Chrome is the most popular internet browser nowadays, so we’ve decided to research extensions that increase your online safety. Even though it claims to automatically protect you from security issues, such as phishing attacks and dangerous websites, as the online threatscape evolves, it never hurts to add extra layers of protection.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through a variety of Chrome extensions, ranging from anti-tracking solutions, ad blockers, password managers, and VPN solutions, to name a few.

We hand-picked the add-ons from a wide palette of solutions, with the intention to help you browse safely on the internet.

So let’s jump in.

Here are some of the best privacy and safety-related Chrome extensions.

1. Privacy Badger

Privacy Badger is a browser add-on developed by The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), that blocks advertisers and third-party trackers from tracking the web pages you visit. Essentially, whenever it detects advertisers who track you across different websites without your consent, it automatically stops them from inserting any more content into your browser.

Keep in mind this isn’t a standard ad blocker, as it wasn’t created with the intention to completely block ads.

What it really does is focus on stopping any visible or invisible third-party scripts or images that seem to be tracking your activity despite the fact that you specifically refused to be tracked by sending a Do Not Track header. Most of these third-party trackers happen to be advertisements, so that’s why most of them will be blocked.

Does it make sense to simultaneously use Privacy Badger and a standard ad blocker? If you really despise ads, EFF advises on using a combination between Privacy Badger and uBlock Origin.

2. Ghostery

Ghostery is similar to Privacy Badger – it detects and blocks third-party technologies which track you and it also markets itself as an ad blocker. Thus, it provides a clean and fast browsing experience, while preventing advertisers from tracking your activity.

The Smart Blocking feature increases the pages’ loading speed, by automatically blocking and unblocking trackers.

3. HTTPS Everywhere.

HTTPS Everywhere is an add-on created by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Tor Project, that changes websites from insecure “HTTP” to secure “HTTPS”.