With data breaches and unpleasant Facebook revelations in the news, privacy is a hot topic.
There are many things you can do to safeguard your privacy in the digital realm, but do you have the time and knowledge to accomplish them all? Avira Privacy Pal promises to quickly and easily fix more than 200 potential privacy issues; it also wipes traces of browser and computer use.
It's a fine first try, though it could use a little polishing.
As with Avira's antivirus products, the installer offers other Avira products while it works.
I saw different products in different installations, but they all came from this list: Antivirus, Browser Safety, Home Guard (an IoT network scanner), Password Manager, Phantom VPN, Safe Shopping, SafeSearch Plus, Software Updater, and System Speedup.
All six have a button labeled "Install for free," and many are totally free.
However, without a paid subscription, Avira Phantom VPN limits you to 500MB of internet traffic per month.
And System Speedup and Software Updater are feature-limited free editions of commercial products.
If you skip adding other products at installation, don't worry.
You can always get them later.
Along with Privacy Pal, you receive a management program for Avira products that includes all of the products listed above.
The unusual main screen displays a colorful, slowly undulating graph showing the percentage of Digital Traces to Fix, Privacy Settings to Adjust, and Currently Protected.
On my test system, those three came in at 50 percent, 47 percent, and 3 percent, respectively.
Oddly, when I installed the product on my production system it displayed the same numbers.
In addition, when I launched it again after cleaning up traces, it came up with the same numbers once more.
Could the numbers just be placeholders, with no calculation behind them?
Hands On With Privacy Pal
When you click the Start button, Privacy Pal makes a quick scan for privacy vulnerabilities and digital traces.
After that scan on my test system, it reported, "Based on your settings, I can clean 1,163 digital traces from your device".
Yes, this utility really wants to be your pal.
Its messaging frequently uses "I" language, and when it starts, it wishes you a good morning (or whatever time of day is appropriate).
Privacy Pal lists six categories of traces, four browser-related ones plus chat logs and application usage logs.
Out of the box, the only category selected for cleaning is Browser cache; you choose which others to enable.
Clicking the pencil icon next to a category offers more detail.
For example, digging into any of the browser-related items displays how many traces found for each browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Opera).
You can drill down further for a list of all the found traces.
It's possible to protect individual traces by removing the checkmark, but most users should just go with Privacy Pal's recommendations.
When you click the Clean button, Privacy Pal starts wiping out the selected traces.
During the process, it displays fun facts such as, "Did you know the first computer mouse was made of wood?"
What About Privacy?
I could see that Privacy Pal wiped out computer and browser usage traces, but I didn't see it doing anything about privacy.
What happened to those 200 settings? After a little digging, I found them.
On the main screen, there's a label that says, "Privacy Protection: Personalized," with an edit-pencil icon.
Clicking that icon lets you switch from the Personalized privacy level to Basic or Enhanced privacy.
At the Basic level, it disables things like Microsoft's telemetry services in Windows and Office, and advertising features of the Windows Store.
Switching to the Enhanced level stops many more potential leaks.
Among the activities it can block are reporting of handwriting data, sending found malware information to Microsoft, and allowing apps to use the microphone.
I accidentally discovered that the available options vary by operating system.
My test virtual machine runs Windows 8.
When I installed on a Windows 10 system, it gained several more categories, including one to disable Cortana.
But what did it actually do? My Avira contact explained that at present there is no report or log of privacy activity, though this may appear in the next version.
The only way to see what it does is to dig into the Personalized privacy level and see which items are enabled.
Personalized Privacy
When you click the edit-pencil next to Personalized on the privacy level selection page, you get a list of 16 categories of privacy protection such as "Don't allow remote access to my device or show it in networks" and "Don't share my personal data with Microsoft." Initially these are all turned off, and figuring out what Privacy Pal does is an awkward process.
Note that out of the box, Privacy Pal does nothing to fix your privacy settings, because Personalized is the default level, and it starts out with nothing enabled.
I'd like to see an onboarding process that invites selection of Basic or Enhanced protection.
Clicking the Change link lets you choose Basic privacy, Enhanced privacy, the most recent custom level, the original Windows privacy level, or the current state.
You can also choose to select and enable all items, but don't.
Doing so could cause problems.
When you select a level, the switches change to reflect that level's settings.
For example, at the Basic level, the only categories selected are "Don't show customized ads in the Windows Start Menu and Microsoft Store apps" and "Don't allow websites or companies to track me."
Even the Enhanced level enables only 10 of the 16 categories.
That's sensible—there are privacy settings that go too far for most users.
For example, most folks don't want to "Disable Microsoft Store" or "Block Microsoft Store apps access to my camera, microphone, messages, calendar, account data and wireless connections."
Expert View
If you reallyeally want to know about the 200 privacy settings in Privacy Pal, click the link that switches to Expert View.
This brings up a page with five tabs: Operating system, Network, User privacy, Browser, and Apps.
Now you can determine exactly what settings each privacy level uses, awkwardly.
If you want to check out the Enhanced security level, you must choose it from the Change to menu on each page.
You absolutely don't have to look at these details.
You can just choose Basic or Enhanced privacy and let the program do its work.
But if you do dare drill down this far, Privacy Pal helps with pop-up explanations for many of the items.
For example, the item "Don't inform if my system gets infected with malware" might sound bad.
But, as the pop-up explains, it means that the Malicious Software Removal Tool will still protect you, it just won't report its actions back to Microsoft.
In testing, I found the pop-up explanations helpful.
However, they didn't pop up quite in the right place on my virtual machine test system.
Some appeared a little to the left, others a lot to the left.
If you decide to dig in and create your own custom settings, pay attention to the yellow dot that appears after some of the items, for example, "Disable Network Connectivity Status indicator." Pointing to the dot displays a pop-up warning that says, "Activating this option might cause some features to stop working."
Other Approaches
There aren't too many products specifically aimed at protecting privacy, and those that exist take a wide variety of approaches to protection.
The browser protection component of Avira Antivirus actively blocks advertisers and others who attempt to track your browsing history across multiple sites.
It even shows you all the trackers present on the website you're visiting.
Quite a few antivirus and security suite products offer this active Do Not Track feature.
Privacy Pal does not—at least, not visibly.
Advertising is big business, and advertisers keep devising new techniques for tracking consumers and targeting ads.
One technique involves querying the browser for tons of system information and building a fingerprint that uniquely identifies you.
TrackOFF Basic( at Amazon) foils these trackers by making minor changes that don't affect your own use of the computer but that give you an ever-changing fingerprint.
One way to keep your documents private is to encrypt them, and encryption is at the core of Steganos Privacy Suite($51.94 at Amazon).
It also includes a password manager, an ad blocker, and more.
Perhaps the most far-reaching privacy utility is Abine Blur.
This does include active Do Not Track, and a password manager, and that's just the beginning.
Its main power lies in creating masked versions of your emails, phone numbers, and credit card numbers.
You can still exchange email, make calls, and use your card for online purchases, but the merchant doesn't receive your actual information.
If you start getting spam on one of your masked email addresses, you can see which merchant is responsible, and delete that address.
A Good First Try
My contact at Avira explained that the Avira Privacy Pal we see today is version 1.0, and that the developers are gathering all the feedback they can to make an improved version 2, perhaps as early as this summer.
They're working on adding pop-up tips to more of the Expert mode settings, for starters.
Other possible additions include activity logging and notifications when you start accumulating browser and computer usage traces, along with fine-tuning the interface.
Our Editors' Choice for privacy protection tools emains Abine Blur, which has the amazing ability to let you shop online without giving merchants your real email address, phone number, or credit card.
Pros
Configures more than 200 privacy settings.
Clears traces of computer and browser usage.
Attractive user interface.
Free.
View More
Cons
Privacy component not enabled by default.
User interface awkward in places.
No log or report of privacy setting changes.
The Bottom Line
The experts at Avira pulled together more than 200 privacy settings and created Avira Privacy Pal to automatically configure them for you.
This version 1.0 tool is free and easy to use, but it needs a little fine-tuning.
With data breaches and unpleasant Facebook revelations in the news, privacy is a hot topic.
There are many things you can do to safeguard your privacy in the digital realm, but do you have the time and knowledge to accomplish them all? Avira Privacy Pal promises to quickly and easily fix more than 200 potential privacy issues; it also wipes traces of browser and computer use.
It's a fine first try, though it could use a little polishing.
As with Avira's antivirus products, the installer offers other Avira products while it works.
I saw different products in different installations, but they all came from this list: Antivirus, Browser Safety, Home Guard (an IoT network scanner), Password Manager, Phantom VPN, Safe Shopping, SafeSearch Plus, Software Updater, and System Speedup.
All six have a button labeled "Install for free," and many are totally free.
However, without a paid subscription, Avira Phantom VPN limits you to 500MB of internet traffic per month.
And System Speedup and Software Updater are feature-limited free editions of commercial products.
If you skip adding other products at installation, don't worry.
You can always get them later.
Along with Privacy Pal, you receive a management program for Avira products that includes all of the products listed above.
The unusual main screen displays a colorful, slowly undulating graph showing the percentage of Digital Traces to Fix, Privacy Settings to Adjust, and Currently Protected.
On my test system, those three came in at 50 percent, 47 percent, and 3 percent, respectively.
Oddly, when I installed the product on my production system it displayed the same numbers.
In addition, when I launched it again after cleaning up traces, it came up with the same numbers once more.
Could the numbers just be placeholders, with no calculation behind them?
Hands On With Privacy Pal
When you click the Start button, Privacy Pal makes a quick scan for privacy vulnerabilities and digital traces.
After that scan on my test system, it reported, "Based on your settings, I can clean 1,163 digital traces from your device".
Yes, this utility really wants to be your pal.
Its messaging frequently uses "I" language, and when it starts, it wishes you a good morning (or whatever time of day is appropriate).
Privacy Pal lists six categories of traces, four browser-related ones plus chat logs and application usage logs.
Out of the box, the only category selected for cleaning is Browser cache; you choose which others to enable.
Clicking the pencil icon next to a category offers more detail.
For example, digging into any of the browser-related items displays how many traces found for each browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Opera).
You can drill down further for a list of all the found traces.
It's possible to protect individual traces by removing the checkmark, but most users should just go with Privacy Pal's recommendations.
When you click the Clean button, Privacy Pal starts wiping out the selected traces.
During the process, it displays fun facts such as, "Did you know the first computer mouse was made of wood?"
What About Privacy?
I could see that Privacy Pal wiped out computer and browser usage traces, but I didn't see it doing anything about privacy.
What happened to those 200 settings? After a little digging, I found them.
On the main screen, there's a label that says, "Privacy Protection: Personalized," with an edit-pencil icon.
Clicking that icon lets you switch from the Personalized privacy level to Basic or Enhanced privacy.
At the Basic level, it disables things like Microsoft's telemetry services in Windows and Office, and advertising features of the Windows Store.
Switching to the Enhanced level stops many more potential leaks.
Among the activities it can block are reporting of handwriting data, sending found malware information to Microsoft, and allowing apps to use the microphone.
I accidentally discovered that the available options vary by operating system.
My test virtual machine runs Windows 8.
When I installed on a Windows 10 system, it gained several more categories, including one to disable Cortana.
But what did it actually do? My Avira contact explained that at present there is no report or log of privacy activity, though this may appear in the next version.
The only way to see what it does is to dig into the Personalized privacy level and see which items are enabled.
Personalized Privacy
When you click the edit-pencil next to Personalized on the privacy level selection page, you get a list of 16 categories of privacy protection such as "Don't allow remote access to my device or show it in networks" and "Don't share my personal data with Microsoft." Initially these are all turned off, and figuring out what Privacy Pal does is an awkward process.
Note that out of the box, Privacy Pal does nothing to fix your privacy settings, because Personalized is the default level, and it starts out with nothing enabled.
I'd like to see an onboarding process that invites selection of Basic or Enhanced protection.
Clicking the Change link lets you choose Basic privacy, Enhanced privacy, the most recent custom level, the original Windows privacy level, or the current state.
You can also choose to select and enable all items, but don't.
Doing so could cause problems.
When you select a level, the switches change to reflect that level's settings.
For example, at the Basic level, the only categories selected are "Don't show customized ads in the Windows Start Menu and Microsoft Store apps" and "Don't allow websites or companies to track me."
Even the Enhanced level enables only 10 of the 16 categories.
That's sensible—there are privacy settings that go too far for most users.
For example, most folks don't want to "Disable Microsoft Store" or "Block Microsoft Store apps access to my camera, microphone, messages, calendar, account data and wireless connections."
Expert View
If you reallyeally want to know about the 200 privacy settings in Privacy Pal, click the link that switches to Expert View.
This brings up a page with five tabs: Operating system, Network, User privacy, Browser, and Apps.
Now you can determine exactly what settings each privacy level uses, awkwardly.
If you want to check out the Enhanced security level, you must choose it from the Change to menu on each page.
You absolutely don't have to look at these details.
You can just choose Basic or Enhanced privacy and let the program do its work.
But if you do dare drill down this far, Privacy Pal helps with pop-up explanations for many of the items.
For example, the item "Don't inform if my system gets infected with malware" might sound bad.
But, as the pop-up explains, it means that the Malicious Software Removal Tool will still protect you, it just won't report its actions back to Microsoft.
In testing, I found the pop-up explanations helpful.
However, they didn't pop up quite in the right place on my virtual machine test system.
Some appeared a little to the left, others a lot to the left.
If you decide to dig in and create your own custom settings, pay attention to the yellow dot that appears after some of the items, for example, "Disable Network Connectivity Status indicator." Pointing to the dot displays a pop-up warning that says, "Activating this option might cause some features to stop working."
Other Approaches
There aren't too many products specifically aimed at protecting privacy, and those that exist take a wide variety of approaches to protection.
The browser protection component of Avira Antivirus actively blocks advertisers and others who attempt to track your browsing history across multiple sites.
It even shows you all the trackers present on the website you're visiting.
Quite a few antivirus and security suite products offer this active Do Not Track feature.
Privacy Pal does not—at least, not visibly.
Advertising is big business, and advertisers keep devising new techniques for tracking consumers and targeting ads.
One technique involves querying the browser for tons of system information and building a fingerprint that uniquely identifies you.
TrackOFF Basic( at Amazon) foils these trackers by making minor changes that don't affect your own use of the computer but that give you an ever-changing fingerprint.
One way to keep your documents private is to encrypt them, and encryption is at the core of Steganos Privacy Suite($51.94 at Amazon).
It also includes a password manager, an ad blocker, and more.
Perhaps the most far-reaching privacy utility is Abine Blur.
This does include active Do Not Track, and a password manager, and that's just the beginning.
Its main power lies in creating masked versions of your emails, phone numbers, and credit card numbers.
You can still exchange email, make calls, and use your card for online purchases, but the merchant doesn't receive your actual information.
If you start getting spam on one of your masked email addresses, you can see which merchant is responsible, and delete that address.
A Good First Try
My contact at Avira explained that the Avira Privacy Pal we see today is version 1.0, and that the developers are gathering all the feedback they can to make an improved version 2, perhaps as early as this summer.
They're working on adding pop-up tips to more of the Expert mode settings, for starters.
Other possible additions include activity logging and notifications when you start accumulating browser and computer usage traces, along with fine-tuning the interface.
Our Editors' Choice for privacy protection tools emains Abine Blur, which has the amazing ability to let you shop online without giving merchants your real email address, phone number, or credit card.
Pros
Configures more than 200 privacy settings.
Clears traces of computer and browser usage.
Attractive user interface.
Free.
View More
Cons
Privacy component not enabled by default.
User interface awkward in places.
No log or report of privacy setting changes.
The Bottom Line
The experts at Avira pulled together more than 200 privacy settings and created Avira Privacy Pal to automatically configure them for you.
This version 1.0 tool is free and easy to use, but it needs a little fine-tuning.
