Don't Trust Google Chrome: 6 Browsers That Protect Your Online Privacy

Which browser to choose to protect against tracking, ads, third-party cookies and fingerprinting, reports Lifehacker.

Photo: IStock

Every website you visit tracks you in one form or another. These are usually site cookies, small blocks of data used to remember your preferences. But things start to go awry when sites use ad trackers, third-party cookies, and now fingerprints.

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Third party cookies are cookies inserted by other companies such as Google, Facebook or advertising companies. They are used to follow you from another site, creating a profile that can be used to display ads. These cookies even track the location of your device.

Fingerprints are a relatively new online privacy threat that allows companies to learn about your fingerprints as you browse. This could be your browser version, type, operating system, time zone, location, plugins, fonts, and more. There is so much data here that the accumulated information can be used to identify the user.

So what can you do about it? If you want to become invulnerable, you can create your own tracker blocker using your Raspberry Pi. Or you can install privacy extensions like Decentraleyes, uBlock Origin, or DuckDuckGo. But first you have to start with a browser that already has good built-in privacy features (no Google Chrome).

Firefox

For many years Firefox has established itself as a privacy-focused alternative to Chrome. And every year Mozilla gets better at it. While we'll be talking about privacy-only browsers, this is often a difficult transition for most users. That's why we recommend Firefox as a good starting point.

First of all, Firefox is a fast and feature rich browser. It has its own ecosystem of add-ons, extensions and settings. Firefox has a dedicated Enhanced Tracking Protection feature that blocks ad trackers, social media trackers, third-party cookies, fingerprints, and crypto miners—all the basic features you'll look for in a privacy browser. But by default, Firefox will only do this in private windows. We suggest you go to "Settings" > "Privacy" and switch to "Strict" mode in order to apply this setting to all websites. There is also a custom setting that allows you to choose what and where to block.

Brave

Brave is a browser with built-in privacy. By default, it blocks ad trackers, cross-site cookies, and fingerprinting. Brave also has an aggressive mode to block fingerprinting - this can break sites. Brave is built on top of Chromium, so you can use all your favorite Chrome extensions.

Overall, Brave is a good and fast browser. But he does some strange things. He is really trying to promote his own cryptocoin, which is used to pay for websites, and there are many other things based on crypto on the start page. Fortunately, both features can be disabled and ignored.

Safari

If you are using a Mac, iPhone or iPad, Safari will be a good starting point when it comes to online privacy. Apple has its own tool called Intelligent Tracking Prevention, which uses on-device machine learning to block cross-site tracking. This feature is enabled by default. But since it is based on machine learning, this is not a complete ban. It prioritizes website functionality over privacy blocking, and will not block trackers if they disrupt sites.

Safari will also generate a privacy report to let you know how many trackers it has blocked. However, Safari's privacy features are not reliable and far from invasive.

Edge

Love Chrome but want a privacy-focused browser? Switch to Microsoft Edge. Microsoft has done a really good job of taking Chromium and making it a fast, flexible, and private browser.

Edge has a tracking prevention feature with three different levels. Basic, balanced and strict. The Strict setting blocks most trackers from all sites. In this mode, ads will have minimal personalization. Go to Settings > Privacy, Search & Services > Tracking Prevention and switch to Strict Mode.

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Microsoft is also rapidly developing the privacy features in Edge. Its new Super Duper Secure Mode, which is currently in testing, sounds silly, but it makes a huge leap in tracking prevention by disabling Just-In-Time JavaScript compilers that are used to extract real-time data from web pages.

DuckDuckGo's

If you are looking for a private browser for iPhone or Android, DuckDuckGo's Privacy Browser - a good option.

It is a very simple and fast browser that prevents trackers from following you. You can use the private search engine DuckDuckGo. It also forces sites to use encrypted connections.

Tor

Want real privacy? Then browser Tor For you. Tor is a dedicated privacy-focused browser that routes all your traffic through many different volunteer servers around the world. This makes Tor a slow browser for everyday use, but it has a huge advantage: this routing and rerouting process actually removes and disables all ad trackers, third-party cookies, and even prevents fingerprinting and snooping. The Tor Browser is available for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android.

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