NortonLifeLock, a global leader in consumer Cyber Safety, today announced the release in India of an all-new online privacy offering, Norton AntiTrack. Third-party companies and websites track consumers’ online searches and collect their personal data. With Norton AntiTrack people can have more control on whether they leave behind a digital footprint, thanks to a solution offering real-time reaction and detection of trackers, blocking combined with advanced anti-fingerprinting technology.
Norton AntiTrack is an app and browser extension for Mac and Windows PCs, which helps people take control of their online privacy and keep their data private. It helps to obscure the user’s digital identity from tracking and fingerprinting attempts, with anti-fingerprinting technology returning untraceable data back to the sites visited, without sacrificing their Mac or PC’s speed, interrupting their browsing experience or web functionality.
“Despite many of the online privacy tools available, most companies can still identify us via unique characteristics that create a fingerprint. According to our research, the largest trackers know about two thirds of the browsing history of nearly all online users. As a result of this expert research, we know that typically consumers encounter 177 different trackers in a week, 84% of these within the first 12 hours of going online,” said Ritesh Chopra, Norton Director India & SAARC Countries, at NortonLifeLock.
“As people spend more time online than ever before, we’re seeing the growing importance they place on their privacy. With Norton AntiTrack, we’re delivering new ways to help put control back in the hands of consumers, to help protect their online privacy. Norton AntiTrack has already blocked billions of tracking attempts internationally.”
Consumers are being tracked online every day. With every website visited, consumers leave a digital trail of personal data, pulled together from cookies, fingerprinting and profiling technology. This data can be used in different ways beyond their control, whether it is for marketing purposes to improve the user experience, targeted with tailored advertising and targeted information, or to influence their online behaviour and even potentially, personal views. This data may even be aggregated with other data, to create an in-depth profile of an individual’s online interests.
According to the 2022 Norton Cyber Safety Insights Report1, four-fifths of Indians surveyed (82%) say they are more alarmed than ever about their online privacy and 86% want to do more to protect their privacy. Nearly half (47%) believe it’s impossible to protect their privacy. Norton Labs Research shows that no matter how many trackers you encounter at the end of the week, almost all of them know about you in just a few browsing hours.
Norton AntiTrack helps consumers view and track third party attempts to gather their data, which means they can remain in control and informed about the tracking attempts that have been blocked. The user-friendly dashboard also allows consumers to choose if they wish to be tracked by third parties on a particular site.
Norton AntiTrack goes beyond normal private browsers, helping prevent the profiling of consumers in ways that other tools don’t. Discover the key features:
- Anti-Fingerprinting Capabilities: Since launch, the Norton AntiTrack technology to help mask digital fingerprints has blocked millions of digital fingerprints on behalf of users. This anti-fingerprinting technology camouflages users’ unique identifiers including their device and operating system, font size, screen resolution and more, helping prevent companies from creating a digital ‘fingerprint’ profile of the user to track and profile them.
- Tracker Blocking: By creating and updating dynamic lists of trackers, using cutting-edge tracker detection crawling techniques, according to research by NortonLifeLock, Norton AntiTrack has detected up to 400% more trackers in some cases.
- Cookie Blocking: Helps block cookies that attempt to track browsing history and collect personal information.
- Faster Browsing: Using algorithms to avoid webpage breakage, this helps block trackers before the webpage starts to load, it means webpages are enabled to load faster.
- Tracking Dashboard: Offers visibility and insights on third-party tracking attempts and ranks them by level of concern.
Norton AntiTrack is available for Mac, Windows 10 and Windows 11 (excluding Windows 10 in S mode and Windows running on ARM processor), supporting Safari, Google Chrome, Mozilla FireFox and Microsoft Edge browsers.