Norton Anti-Track

Norton Anti-Track foils browser finger printers, blocks traditional cookie-based trackers, and now masks your email address.

What Are Browser Cookies?

 It's Surprisingly Easy to Be More Secure Online

What Is Browser Fingerprinting?

There’s nothing about browsing a website that requires a continuous connection. Your browser sends  a request to the server, and the server returns a page of data. That’s the end of the interaction. Technically. In real life, you want the server to remember you for many reasons. You wouldn’t want to enter a password for each page on a secure site, would you? And it’s convenient that some sites remember your preferences between visits.
A designer at Netscape (remember Netscape?) worked out a solution way back in the '90s in the form of a
“magic cookie” stored on the user’s machine, not on the server. Only the site that created the cookie can
access its contents, at least in theory. And, of course, nobody would misuse this technology, right?

Getting Started With Norton AntiTrack

You sign into your Norton account online to purchase Norton Anti-Track. Installation is quick, but it’s not finished until you install the browser extension on at least one browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, or Safari). In practical terms, you should install it on every browser you use. With the extension in place, the app itself opens

Norton Blocks Browser Fingerprinting

It’s hard to test whether this—or any active Do Not Track system—blocks the trackers it claims. I’d have to
create a tracking ad, somehow get it onto the page, and check its status. But the technology is
straightforward, and I have no doubt it works.
Checking whether it blocks fingerprinting could theoretically be easier because there are websites devoted to
measuring this technology. However, Norton AntiTrack doesn’t just tweak your fingerprint on a schedule the
way Avast AntiTrack does. It detects sites that use fingerprinting and targets them for confusion. That being
the case, I didn’t know how it would do with those test websites, but I tried anyway.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation provides the
CoverYourTracks page as a resource for checking your
browser fingerprint. This page’s summary reported that I “have strong protection against Web tracking,
though your software isn’t checking for Do Not Track policies.” When I tested Avast Anti-Track, the same page
reported, “You are not protected against tracking.” I ran this test several times over a period of hours. Each
time, it reported my signature to be unique in its collection.

Third-party cookies are where we run into trouble. The contents of a modern web page don’t come just from
the site you requested. The page pulls in advertisements and other components from third-party sites, and
each of these sites can place its own cookie on your system. Not only that, but the same advertiser on a
different page can link the fact that you visited both those pages or any pages where the ad appears. Cookies
quickly become a means for trackers to build a profile that maps all your online travels

Norton Blocks Traditional Trackers

With the AntiTrack extensions installed in my browsers, I tried visiting a bunch of popular news sites, as this
type of site always seems to have plenty of trackers. For each site, a numeric overlay on the AntiTrack browser
button quickly totaled up the number of trackers.
Clicking the button opens a pop-up with a little more information. In addition to a large button repeating the
tracker count, this pop-up includes links to exempt the current site from tracker blocking, either once or
always. That can be handy if you suspect that blocking trackers somehow screwed up the page display

New Private Email System

When you first launch Norton AntiTrack on a Windows system, it suggests you set up the new Private Email
system. If you don’t do that right away, you’ll still see a panel for Private Email at the lower left in the main
window. Once you’ve completed the setup, that panel maintains a link to the Private Email dashboard.

What Other Apps Block Tracking?

As noted, you’ll find active Do Not Track systems supplied with many
antiviruses or security suites. This is also
a common feature in privacy-focused tools such as IDX Complete, Iron Vest,
Electronic Frontier Foundation's free Privacy Badger.
Ghostery Privacy Suite, and the
Avast Anti-Track blocks trackers and fingerprinting like Norton Anti-Track but also includes a component to
clear personal data from your browsers. It also features a component that enhances your privacy by ensuring
the correct values for certain Windows privacy settings (though it doesn’t specify which).
Contained in
Avira Free Security is a feature called Privacy Settings. Here, you control 140 privacy settings in
17 categories. It helps you attain the best configuration by matching the advice of the company’s experts for
either regular or enhanced privacy

Instead of trying to manipulate anything on your computer,
browser fingerprinting makes use of the huge
amount of information that your browser reveals to every website. Which fonts are available on this device?
What browser extensions are present? What is the precise version of the browser? What’s the screen
resolution? Trackers now use algorithms that process this data into a fingerprint that uniquely identifies you.

One thing that's not required to identify you with a unique fingerprint is your IP address. You can install the
best VPN and use it to spoof your IP address so that you appear to be in Pottsylvania, but that doesn't change
your fingerprint. There are plenty of virtues to using a VPN; fooling this fingerprinting technique isn’t one of
them.
If the trackers are simply harvesting information normally sent by your browser, not trying to save any files or
run any code on your computer, what defense is possible? As it turns out, Norton AntiTrack and similar
services offer a simple solution. They manipulate the data supplied by your browser in a way that doesn’t
interfere with its legitimate uses but that gives you a constantly (or at least frequently) changing fingerprint

Not Just for Windows Anymore

When last reviewed, Norton AntiTrack was strictly a Windows tool. You can now also use it on your Windows,
macOS, Android, and iOS devices. For each new device, you can log into your Norton account and download
the installer or send an install link by email. With mobile devices, you have the option to snap a QR code.
These cross-platform editions strictly handle tracking—email mask management is a Windows-only feature.

How Much Is Browser Fingerprinting Protection Worth to You?

Yes, Norton AntiTrack now offers email masking, but dedicated temporary email services such as ManyMe
and Bulc Club do the same, with more features, at no charge. Active defense against traditional tracking is
found in quite a few other solutions, some of them free. In effect, you just pay Norton AntiTrack to block
browser fingerprinting, which Norton's own reports reveal is still relatively uncommon.
IronVest, our Editors’
Choice for online privacy, blocks traditional trackers, manages passwords, and masks not only your email but
also your credit cards and phone. It doesn't, however, block browser fingerprinting. Avast Anti-Track fakes out
finger printers just as Norton does, but with its own useful privacy bonuses. When you think of adding Norton
Anti-Track to your privacy arsenal, consider these alternatives as well.