The Best Internet Browsers to Protect Your Privacy (and One Worst)
Web browsers collect a lot of data and share it with the sites we visit, so if you’re concerned about your privacy, it’s worth considering which browsers are best at keeping our online habits to ourselves. Whether you’re an activist concerned about surveillance, a person conducting research in a country where your topic might get you in trouble, or just someone who doesn’t want to have their search history spied on, using a more private browser may be one of the simplest steps you can take to worry less. I spoke with William Budington , a senior technologist at the public interest group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and Janet Vertesi , an assistant professor of sociology at Princeton University who has published extensively on human-computer interaction and online privacy. They had slightly different opinions on which browsers were best for your privacy, but they finally agreed on one thing: it wasn’t Chrome.
“There are no perfect browsers that protect your privacy, but Chrome certainly isn’t one of them,” Budington says.
Vertesi agrees: “If you use Chrome, you’ll have to give up Chrome.”
It’s no surprise that the most private browser isn’t the one made by a company that makes most of its revenue from data collection. But which browsers are more private?
Tor is the best private browser, but it has its drawbacks.
Tor is designed with privacy in mind. The browser disables all cookies, masks fingerprints, and routes all traffic through at least three different hosts. This level of privacy is unparalleled, but it comes at a cost: many websites simply don’t work.
“Because it’s meant to be ephemeral, leave no trace, and disable cookies by default, it will become the gold standard when it comes to privacy and anonymity,” says Budington, “but there’s a tradeoff in usability.” The problem, according to Budington, is that Tor’s privacy means it is a common tool for distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, which in turn means many services block it.
“Tor is probably the most secure because it’s completely untraceable, but it can’t be used for everything,” Vertesi says. “You can’t use Tor exclusively.”
Both experts recommended using Tor for those times when you really want to make sure no one is watching.
“If you want to know about your health, use Tor because it won’t leak your browsing information,” Budington adds. “You might want to use the Tor browser in these specific situations, but there are browsers that do a good job of protecting your privacy while being much more convenient to use.”
Brave is a good option for private browsing, but it has its caveats.
Brave is a Chromium-based browser designed for privacy. It offers built-in ad and tracking blocking, fingerprint randomization, and various other privacy features. Both experts acknowledged that there are various controversies about the company , but still believe that it is a reliable out-of-the-box option for private browsing.
“They are clearly taking reasonable and good steps to protect user privacy,” Budington said. He particularly highlighted the length that Brave uses to randomize your browser’s fingerprinting, which can protect against canvas fingerprinting, in which sites render unnecessary vector imagery to detect subtle differences in hardware configuration. Other browsers on this list don’t do this, and that might be worth keeping in mind.
Brave is also built on top of Chromium code, which means that sites that break in Firefox and Tor usually open without problems. “Brave is an option if you want something that’s compatible with Chrome,” says Vertesi.
Firefox is still great with the right extensions
You already know about Firefox—once among the most popular browsers on the planet—and it’s still a good option for security-conscious users, as long as you don’t mind some customization.
“When you install the right add-ons, Firefox can be as private as Brave,” says Budington, recommending EFF’s own Privacy Badger along with the uBlock Origin ad blocker. “There’s no reason not to use them in combination,” he adds, noting that there are also add-ons to randomize fingerprinting.
And there’s a lot more interesting stuff if you dig around. “What I like about Firefox is that you can block it in the settings,” says Vertesi. She emphasized the fact that Firefox was created by a non-profit, not a commercial organization. “Their job is not to please investors,” she notes. “This is important because it means you are not the product.” Both experts admitted that, like Brave, Firefox has its recent controversies to be aware of, but they still recommend the browser.
Why You Should Use Different Browsers for Different Purposes
Vertesi emphasized that a core part of her privacy strategy is using multiple browsers. “Don’t choose one best browser, use many,” she said. “It’s a way to isolate different parts of your life so your browser doesn’t know about other accounts.” Vertesi, for example, typically has one browser for occasional browsing of Facebook products and nothing else—so Facebook can’t track other browsing. She said there are many good options, including Opera, Vivaldi, the DuckDuckGo browser and even Apple’s Safari, which has several privacy-related features. Budington noted that since all Apple devices are so close in terms of hardware configuration, Safari has occasional fingerprint protection.
Ultimately, privacy isn’t something we can get by installing a particular browser—it’s more of a mindset, and it involves strategies that compromise our convenience. Tor, Brave and Firefox have varying balances of privacy and usability, along with smaller options such as Opera, Vivaldi and the DuckDuckGo browser. The right option will depend on how you balance these factors at any given time.
But again, if you care about your privacy, the best place to start is simply not using Chrome. “If you have a great VPN, but you do everything in Chrome…why?” says Vertesi.