For students on campus, privacy threats go beyond visible tools like cameras and monitoring software.
Device fingerprinting is one of them. Websites, and the tracking scripts on them, can combine small details about your device and browser, such as screen size, fonts, language, time zone and browser version, into a profile that can often tell your device apart from many others.
Because a fingerprint does not depend on cookies or history, it can work even when you browse in a private or incognito mode. And on a campus network, the people who run the network can usually see which sites a device connects to, with or without fingerprinting.
Imagine a journalism student, Jason, who often researches sensitive topics for his assignments.
Jason assumed private browsing kept his research to himself. Then he learned that private browsing only clears what is stored on his own device. It does not stop websites from fingerprinting his phone, and it does not hide his traffic from the campus network.
Switching to Incognito Browser, the Android browser we make, would help with part of that.
Every tab is private, and the app wipes history, cookies and sessions when you exit the app, so his browsing history does not stay on his phone. Downloaded files are kept, so any papers he saves stay on his phone. Its Agent Cloaking feature masks the browser and device details a site sees.
But Agent Cloaking is not fingerprint protection. Sites can use many other signals to build a fingerprint. Incognito Browser is not a VPN either, so websites can still see his IP address, and the campus network can still see where his traffic goes.
If fingerprinting is the main worry, it makes sense to use a browser built against it. Tor Browser aims to make all its users look the same to websites, and Brave says its Shields feature blocks fingerprinting. To keep his traffic away from the campus network, Jason could use a VPN or his phone’s mobile data, within his university’s rules.
This matters in places like universities, where someone else runs the network and tracking on websites is common.
If you want private tabs and a built-in ad blocker on Android, you can download Incognito Browser today.
Just pair it with the right tools for the threats it does not cover, and know which tool protects you from what.
