What are tradeoffs of increasing the level of privacy you have in your web browser?

When you increase the level of privacy in your web browser, you may encounter several trade-offs due to the restrictions that are put into place to protect your data. From the options provided, the following two are valid tradeoffs:

1. Sites may not work properly: Many websites rely on cookies, scripts, and other elements that track user behavior to function correctly. By increasing privacy settings, such as disabling cookies or JavaScript, you might prevent these elements from working as intended, which can lead to features on websites breaking or entire sites failing to load or operate correctly.
2. You may have to explicitly permit some cookies to be saved: Enhancing privacy often involves adjusting your browser’s cookie settings. For instance, setting the browser to block all cookies by default can enhance privacy but may disrupt your browsing experience. As a result, you might need to manually allow cookies for certain trusted sites where you need functionality that only cookies can provide (like session management in web applications).

The other options, while related to browsing issues, are not direct consequences of increasing privacy settings:

• Images won’t load properly: This is less likely a direct consequence of privacy settings unless specific content-blocking features or extensions that block images are enabled, which is generally uncommon as a default privacy measure.
• Websites may load slower: While conceivable if using a privacy-focused proxy or VPN that reroutes traffic, simply increasing privacy settings in a browser (like enabling Do Not Track or blocking third-party cookies) typically doesn’t affect load times significantly unless the settings also block large amounts of content that might otherwise consume bandwidth.
• You may get viruses: Increasing privacy settings generally does not increase the risk of viruses. In fact, by blocking potentially harmful scripts and trackers, it might actually decrease the chance of encountering malicious software, though this is not a guarantee against all types of malware.

Therefore, the most relevant tradeoffs when increasing browser privacy are that some sites may not work properly, and you may have to explicitly permit some cookies to be saved.