YOU’LL NEED THIS VIRTUALBOX AND UBUNTU

Time required: Two hours.

THERE ARE PLENTY

of reasons you should want to try out Linux, but in keeping with our first tutorial this month (see page 64), one of them is to make it harder for your activity to be tracked online. If you want to make sure you can’t be tracked, our best advice would be to use a different PC. You can do this even if you don’t have a second computer by setting up a virtual machine on your computer, which behaves as though it’s an entirely separate device. If set up properly, nothing that happens on your virtual machine will impact your main Windows installation, meaning that any websites you visit won’t be able to identify you.

Here, we’re going to set up a virtual machine running Ubuntu, which is the version of Linux that Windows users will find most familiar. You can also do this with Windows, but that would require you to pay for a second license for the operating system.

The advantage of using Linux is that you can install it for free and, if you want to boost your security further, you can delete the virtual machine every few months and set up a new one at no cost. You don’t need to use your Linux virtual machine every day—just start it up when you want to browse a site you’re not so sure about, and shut it down again when you’ve finished. If you enjoy using Linux, you could even install it on an older PC—running Windows 7, say—to extend its working life.