Google Chrome extensions are housed on the Chrome Web Store, where you can download and add them directly to your browser. Any extensions you add will be saved in the right-hand corner of Chrome, allowing you easy access to their settings.

Display ads help pay the bills for many websites, but the ones that pop up unexpectedly in your browser can be annoying and intrusive. The goal behind AdBlock Plus is to stop ads that disrupt your web browsing, including popups, video ads, and flashing banner ads.

By default, AdBlock Plus allows for Acceptable Ads, which are those deemed less intrusive but necessary for websites to continue providing free content. You can turn off that option if you don't want to see any ads at all.

To configure the extension, right-click the AdBlock Plus toolbar icon and select Options. At the Options screen, you can block specific types of tracking, add whitelisted websites that show ads you don't mind seeing, and include or remove filter lists to determine which types of sites and ads are blocked.

After installing AdBlock Plus, surf the web as you normally would. Now, however, you shouldn't be hit with the same types of intrusive ads that bothered you in the past. Click the toolbar icon for AdBlock Plus. The window shows you how many items have been blocked on the current site and how many across all sites.

From this window, you can turn off ad blocking for a specific site. If AdBlock Plus missed an item you consider an ad, click the Block Element button, then select the item on the page you want to block.

Bumping into the wrong website can infect your PC with malware. Avast Online Security attempts to block and warn you of malicious, virus-hosting sites by tagging websites with a rating of Safe or Not Safe based on input from users; you can share feedback too.

Avast can also help you block cookies and tracking ads. After installation, right-click the toolbar icon and select Options to block ad trackers, analytics sites, and social networks. You can also tweak other settings.

Browse to a website and click the Avast toolbar icon. If the site is okay, Avast displays a green grade proclaiming it as safe. If you happen upon a malicious website, Avast will give it a red mark to signify it as unsafe and warn you to steer clear. A gray mark means the site hasn't been rated. The window that pops up when you click the icon also tells you if Avast blocked any content, such as ad trackers or social networks.

Run a Google or Bing search, and Avast even steps in there, showing you green, gray, or red icons next to each search result. Hover over the icon to see the rating for each site in the search results.

The HTTPS protocol ensures that your login information and other data are encrypted. Most websites have updated their security to use HTTPS instead of HTTP, and Chrome will punish those that have not. Still, many have yet to make the switch, so the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Tor Project created HTTPS Everywhere to automatically change HTTP to HTTPS at unsecure websites to protect and secure your information.

Download HTTPS Everywhere and right-click the toolbar icon. The option to Enable HTTPS Everywhere is automatically enabled. You can also flip the switch to activate Encrypt All Sites Eligible (EASE), which attempts to prevent you from signing into an unsecure HTTP site. Surf to a site that’s stuck on HTTP, and it's automatically converted to HTTPS. Click the toolbar icon to see the names of any current sites for which the extension has forced HTTPS. 

Websites, advertisers, and other third-party companies track our online activities, but finding out who's tracking us, and where they're doing it from, is a challenge. Disconnect shows you the names of specific web trackers for each site you visit and lets you block them from snooping on you.

The basic version of Disconnect lets you view and block web trackers. For $50 a year, a Premium edition kicks in a VPN and a panel that shows you which sites you've blocked.

Navigate to a website like Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, or even Google, then click the Disconnect toolbar icon. The extension displays a list of the different types of tracking requests for that site—advertising, analytics, social, and content.

Click a specific type of request to see the names of actual trackers. Block individual trackers by deselecting them or turn off that type of tracking completely for that site. You can whitelist the site to unblock all tracking and view a visual graph of the site to see all the tracking connections both blocked and unblocked.

Many extensions that block web trackers depend on specific filters to keep out content. Others force you to manually decide whether to allow or block each site. Privacy Badger tries to save you from all this work by learning which sites attempt to track you and then blocking that content.

This process works by sending a Do Not Track signal to those websites. By itself, this request won’t accomplish much since websites typically disregard them. However, if the request is ignored, Privacy Badger learns to block the tracking elements.

The extension also starts blocking if it sees the same tracker on three different sites. Surf to a particular site and click Privacy Badger's toolbar icon. You can see which trackers were blocked and modify or turn off the blocking for that site if you so choose.

Facebook likes to track your online activities to gather information about you for targeted ads. Even when you aren’t using the site, Facebook can track your visits to other websites via third-party cookies. This is called Off-Facebook Activity, and there are ways to control it inside the app itself.

If you want to stop it altogether, Disconnect Facebook acts as a firewall by blocking all Facebook-related requests sent from third-party websites. Just install the extension, and it automatically goes into action. There’s no need to tweak or configure it.

Facebook will no longer be able to snoop on you during visits to other websites. If you’d like the social network to start tracking you again, or track you just for a particular website, click the Disconnect Facebook icon to temporarily turn it off.

Chrome allows you to delete cookies, clear browsing cache, and avoid tracking through Incognito Mode, but Click&Clean offers all those abilities and more through an easily accessible panel.

In addition to what Chrome allows you to do, this add-on gives you the ability to quickly delete your browsing data, either immediately or when you close Chrome. You can also view and remove pages stored in the cache, run a privacy check, and scan for malware.

Install Click&Clean, right-click the toolbar icon, and select Options. From the Options panel, you can decide which items you want removed anytime you clear your data: browsing history, cache, saved passwords, download history, cookies, form data, and more. You can either select each item separately or choose a general level of protection ranging from low to high.

Search the internet like you normally would, then click the toolbar icon to display the panel of all available features and commands. The Main section offers options to securely close the browser, clear private data, view the cache, view and delete your history, go incognito, and manage your cookies. Selecting a specific option then displays the related data so you can view and remove it.