Concept

Private browsing

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Tor (network)

Tor, short for The Onion Router, is free and open-source software for enabling anonymous communication. It directs Internet traffic via a free, worldwide, volunteer overlay network that consists of more than seven thousand relays. Using Tor makes it more difficult to trace a user's Internet activity. Tor protects personal privacy by concealing a user's location and usage from anyone performing network surveillance or traffic analysis. It protects the user's freedom and ability to communicate confidentially through IP address anonymity using Tor exit nodes.

Opera Mini

Opera Mini is a mobile web browser made by Opera. It was primarily designed for the Java ME platform, as a low-end sibling for Opera Mobile, but only the Android build was still under active development. It had previously been developed for iOS, Windows 10 Mobile, Windows Phone 8.1, BlackBerry, Symbian, and Bada. Opera Mini was derived from the Opera web browser. Opera Mini requests web pages through Opera Software's compression proxy server. The compression server processes and compresses requested web pages before sending them to the mobile phone.

Web tracking

Web tracking is the practice by which operators of websites and third parties collect, store and share information about visitors’ activities on the World Wide Web. Analysis of a user's behaviour may be used to provide content that enables the operator to infer their preferences and may be of interest to various parties, such as advertisers. Web tracking can be part of visitor management. The uses of web tracking include the following: Advertising companies actively collect information about users and make profiles that are used to individualize advertisements.

Web browsing history

Web browsing history refers to the list of web pages a user has visited, as well as associated metadata such as page title and time of visit. It is usually stored locally by web browsers in order to provide the user with a history list to go back to previously visited pages. It can reflect the user's interests, needs, and browsing habits. All major browsers have a private browsing mode in which browsing history is not recorded. This is to protect against browsing history being collected by third parties for targeted advertising or other purposes.

Microsoft Edge

Microsoft Edge (or simply Edge) is a proprietary, cross-platform web browser created by Microsoft. It was first released in 2015 as part of Windows 10 and Xbox One and later ported to other platforms as a fork of Google's Chromium open-source project: Android and iOS, macOS, older Windows versions (Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and later were supported until early 2023), and most recently Linux. Edge was created as the successor to Internet Explorer (IE).

Device fingerprint

A device fingerprint or machine fingerprint is information collected about the software and hardware of a remote computing device for the purpose of identification. The information is usually assimilated into a brief identifier using a fingerprinting algorithm. A browser fingerprint is information collected specifically by interaction with the web browser of the device. Device fingerprints can be used to fully or partially identify individual devices even when persistent cookies (and zombie cookies) cannot be read or stored in the browser, the client IP address is hidden, or one switches to another browser on the same device.

Browser extension

A browser extension is a software module for customizing a web browser. Browsers typically allow users to install a variety of extensions, including user interface modifications, cookie management, ad blocking, and the custom scripting and styling of web pages. Browser plug-ins are a different type of module and no longer supported by the major browsers. One difference is that extensions are distributed as source code, while plug-ins are executables (i.e. object code).

Mozilla

Mozilla (stylized as moz://a) is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, publishes and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, with only minor exceptions. The community is supported institutionally by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation and its tax-paying subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation.

Brave (web browser)

Brave is a free and open-source web browser developed by Brave Software, Inc. based on the Chromium web browser. Brave is a privacy-focused browser, which automatically blocks some advertisements and website trackers in its default settings. Users can turn on optional ads that reward them for their attention in the form of Basic Attention Tokens (BAT), which can be used as a cryptocurrency or to make payments to registered websites and content creators. Brave Software's headquarters are in San Francisco, California.

Adobe Flash Player

Adobe Flash Player (known in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome as Shockwave Flash) is computer software for viewing multimedia contents, executing rich Internet applications, and streaming audio and video content created on the Adobe Flash platform. It can run from a web browser as a browser plug-in or independently on supported devices. Originally created by FutureWave under the name FutureSplash Player, it was renamed to Macromedia Flash Player after Macromedia acquired FutureWave in 1996.