Device privacy is not about making your browser reveal nothing. Modern websites need some signals to render pages, secure accounts, play media, process payments, and prevent abuse. The useful goal is to reduce unnecessary exposure while keeping the web usable.

WhatsMyDevice groups visible signals into network data, browser data, hardware estimates, permissions, and fingerprinting clues. Some values are exact, such as your current public IP as seen by this site. Others are deliberately coarse, such as device memory buckets or browser storage quota. This distinction matters because approximate values should not be treated like full hardware inventory.

Start with permissions

Review camera, microphone, location, notification, and clipboard permissions in your browser. Deny access by default and grant it only to sites that need it. A denied permission is usually safer than a remembered allow rule on a site you rarely use.

Keep the boring protections on

Update your browser and operating system. Leave built-in tracking protection enabled. Use HTTPS-only mode when available. Remove extensions you do not actively trust, especially extensions that can read every page. A small, boring setup is usually easier to defend than a complicated one.

Separate contexts

Use different browser profiles for banking, work, social media, and testing. Profiles separate cookies and extension sets, which can reduce cross-site linking. Private windows help for short sessions, but they do not hide your IP address or make your browser fingerprint disappear.

Network privacy

A VPN or proxy can hide your home IP from websites, but it shifts trust to the network provider. Test before and after enabling it. Confirm that the public IP changes and that WebRTC results do not show an unexpected address.

What not to overdo

Do not install many privacy extensions at once. Overlapping tools can break sites and create a rare fingerprint. Prefer fewer, well-maintained protections with clear defaults.