Turn on Private Browsing on Firefox and Chrome

Private browsing means a browsing session where no record of the browsing session is kept. The websites visited, the interaction with those websites, the password or the usernames, the form fill up data, the cookies and the cache, all are deleted securely when private browsing is turned on. The only question, then, is, how to turn on private browsing.

Frankly, there are two major browsers in the market now, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome and both of them support private browsing out of the box. Let’s discuss the steps you need to take in both the browsers to turn it on.

Mozilla Firefox: You can click on the File menu and the third option there is “New Private Window”. Click on that and you are done. Alternatively, click on the three horizontal lines near the top right corner of the browser and you can find the option there as well. If you want, you can also open Firefox and press Control, Shift and P keys together to open a private window.

Google Chrome: Open Google Chrome and click on the three vertical dots near the top right corner of the browser. You will see an option called New Incognito Window which is what private browsing is called in Chrome. Click on that and you are done. You can also launch a private window after opening Chrome by pressing Control, Shift and N keys together.

Remember, once you c lose the private window, you are back to normal browsing where you history, cache and cookies are saved.

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What Is Private Browsing

 

We all want our personal and confidential data safe from others, especially on the internet. Every website collects the data, your system admin or network admin can collect your browsing data, the ISP can check whatever you are doing on the internet and finally, your web browsers keep a tab of what you visit and what you do on the internet. The last one is easy to realise. Have you seen how the web browser can guess which website you want after you type a few letters of the URL, if you have visited the website previously using that browser? How does it do that? By keeping a record of the browsing history. You can check this history as well, the tab is given in popular browsers like Firefox or Chrome.

What is private browsing? It is when you are telling your browser to stop tracking you online. It is called Incognito Browsing in Chrome and private browsing in Firefox. When you turn this on, the browser doesn't keep any record of your online activities for this session and doesn't track you. The elements which help the websites and the browsers to keep your track, the cookies, the caches and browsing history, all are disabled in the private browsing session.

To turn on private browsing in Firefox, simply open Firefox and press Ctrl + Shift + P. Then you can close the normal Firefox and use the private windows. For Chrome, go to the menu and select, New Incognito Window and you are done.

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