How to Monitor and Adjust Website Security Permissions in Chrome

Browsing the web carries the unfortunate side effect of sharing data with the sites we’re visiting. Chrome has a handful of really great tools to minimize the data we’re sharing, but it also features an oft-forgotten tool of its own to give you more control over what information a website can collect. It’s easy to use, and it doesn’t require plugins or set-up. Let’s take a look.

1. Open Chrome and navigate to any website.

2. Click the information icon in the address bar to bring up the control menu. From here, you can take control of what information is being shared as well as verifying whether or not the site is on a secure (https) connection.

3. First, click the Cookies link to see what services are tracking you.

4. It doesn’t look like there’s anything nefarious here, but if we wanted to delete a tracking cookie, we’d just click it and then press block or remove. Block is a more permanent solution, as using remove would place the cookie again next time you visited the site.

5. Press Close to exit the window.

6. To set permissions, just click the up or down arrow next to each of the settings and choose the permission you’re comfortable with. There’s no ‘right’ answer here, as it all boils down to how much you’re comfortable sharing.