The Best Privacy-Focused Browsers You’ve Never Heard Of
It’s never a bad idea to switch to a browser that respects your privacy more than Chrome does. For most people, Firefox or Brave (along with some tweaks to the settings) are good enough. But if you want a browser that’s completely designed with privacy in mind, you have even better options.
Of course, no matter what browser you use, you will never magically disappear from the Internet. But these four browsers start with pre-loaded privacy add-ons, and they also claim they don’t send telemetry. They’re great if you’re looking to reduce tracking from ad networks and your ISP, but not so much if you’re worried about government snooping.
LibreWolf
LibreWolf is a Firefox based browser with uBlock Origin preinstalled . It doesn’t send any telemetry to its developers and prioritizes privacy-focused search engines like DuckDuckGo over the default Google or Bing. You can think of this browser as Firefox but with more privacy out of the box. It’s available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, but you’ll have to manually download and install updates if you download its installer. Instead, you must install the application through repositories such as Chocolatey.
Pale moon
If you want to try a privacy-friendly browser that doesn’t depend on the Chrome Blink or Firefox Gecko engines, then Pale Moon is worth a try. The browser is open source and says it doesn’t collect any data – something that most browsers fail to state in their privacy policies. Most of the time, it works pretty well, but you may run into some issues like video loading issues. Pale Moon is not a popular browser, so you will also have to give up some of the conveniences of using a popular alternative – for example, the latest extensions may not be available for Pale Moon, and your favorite add-ons may not work.
snow haze
All iOS browsers are essentially variants of Safari because Apple doesn’t allow browsers other than WebKit in the App Store. This makes it hard to justify using alternatives to Safari, but even so, some browsers, like SnowHaze , stand out. SnowHaze has a built-in ad blocker available since launch and claims to prevent all kinds of web tracking and fingerprinting by default. An optional paid VPN is also available in the browser, but don’t rush to sign up for it. You should look into the reliability of the developers if you decide to sign up. We have a guide to help you check if a VPN is questionable so you can get started.
Mull
Mull is a privacy-focused browser for Android phones. It’s created by the people behind F-Droid (an alternative app store for Android) and has a focus on privacy. First you need to download the F-Droid client on your phone and then install Mull from there. Once you’ve done that, don’t forget to install uBlock Origin for more privacy.