The best browsers for privacy depends on your needs and knowhow, but Firefox, Tor, and Epic all offer unique features and functions that will help keep your data private online. Test drive each to learn which is best for you and for which situations.
Each website visit yields valuable data, sold to marketers so targeted ads can follow us around the web — unless you’re using the right browser. But what’s the best browser for privacy? There are myriad options other than Chrome or Safari if you’re concerned about online privacy and security.
Why Do I Even Need a Private Browser?
If you aren’t mindful of your browsing data, you should be. We use our browsers for everything from banking to social media to email to online shopping, and a lot of sensitive data gets shared. We should be mindful of where that information is going, who can see it, and how (or if) our data is stored.
Because our data is the main source of profit for big tech, they’re incentivized to collect as much of it as possible, which they then sell to advertisers. Marketers then target us with ads, which follow us around the web for days or weeks at a time. Privacy-focused browsers can cut most or all of that intrusive data collection out of the online experience.
Even with cookies blocked, browser fingerprinting can still create a snapshot of your online behavior. In the wrong hands, that can be used to identify or impersonate you, even though companies claim to anonymize collected user data. Even if bad actors don’t get into your bank account, they may get enough info to commit identity theft.
The Best Browsers For Privacy
The best privacy browsers offer robust protections without sacrificing functionality, and they’re easy to use. Common features of a good privacy browser include:
- Browser fingerprinting blocker
- HTTPS-only browsing
- Cookie blockers
- Very strong encryption measures, e.g., Tor browser’s “onion routing”
And more. The browsers we’ll see here today have some or all of these features and more. Even some stock browsers like Safari have stepped their game up enough to include privacy protections and may be the right choice for casual internet use.
1. Mozilla Firefox
Created by the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation, Firefox has been privacy-focused since the beginning and is considered by many to be the best non-corporate privacy web browser out there. It’s available on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS.
Firefox’s code is open-source, making it hard to hide any suspicious widgets that might be used to surreptitiously collect your browsing data. Right out of the box, it’s configured to block:
- social media trackers
- cross-site tracking cookies
- tracking in private windows
- crypto miners
- fingerprinting scripts
Firefox also sends DNS requests to a secure resolver service. Secure resolvers are DNS servers set up for extra security. They can act as an extra filter between you and the internet by blocking website addresses known to distribute viruses and malware or blocking communication with known bot networks (botnets).
If you need more stringent protection, you can enable them in the settings menu or set up a custom level of privacy protection. Add-ons let you do even more with options like an in-browser VPN, which could be useful if you have to be online in a public place or on an unsecured network.
All of that said, Firefox is configured to send browsing and use information back to Mozilla when you first download it. You can disable that feature by unchecking a few boxes in the Security and Privacy area of the settings menu.
2. Tor
The original totally private browser still holds up today. Many of the privacy features Tor uses have been picked up by other browsers. Firefox, for example, uses a similar method to Tor’s to resist browser fingerprinting.
One of the main reasons Tor is so useful for private browsing is its multi-layered encryption. It encrypts user data three times for three different relay nodes. Each node is operated by a volunteer and only decodes part of the data, meaning no one person ever has the whole message.
Tor also does its best to make every one of its browser windows look the same, thereby resisting browser fingerprinting since all users browsing with Tor look alike. It blocks cookies and trackers and clears your browsing cache each time you close it after a session. All of these features mean Tor is pretty much unbeatable for private online browsing.
However, because of the complicated connection procedure, it has to go through to obscure data, Tor can be slower than other browsers. It also doesn’t work with some plugins because of its safety and security measures. For the tech-savvy person looking for anonymous browsing (e.g. journalists who need to plumb the dark web), Tor is an excellent choice, but it probably won’t end up being your everyday browser unless you can dig into the advanced settings.
3. Epic
If you’re a Chrome user looking for an easy switch, this might be the private browser for you. Built on Chromium, Epic ships with all the privacy protections in place you would expect from a more secure browser, and its interface is almost identical to Chrome.
This browser had a built-in VPN-like feature, obscuring your true IP address when browsing the web. It also claims to block ultrasound signals to guard against near ultrasonic inaudible Trojan (NUIT) attacks, in which attackers send commands to a target’s devices via near-ultrasound sonic waves inaudible to humans. Epic also searches using DuckDuckGo by default and prioritizes connections to websites that have secure socket layer (SSL) encryption, and doesn’t retain browser history.
There are some drawbacks to Epic, though. When tested using the EFF’s Cover Your Tracks tool, default privacy settings weren’t much better than Chrome, saying there’s some protection, but the browser still has gaps.
You’ll want to enable stronger privacy measures by clicking the umbrella icon in the upper right-hand corner of the browser window to get better protection from tracking. Epic’s source code also isn’t publicly available, meaning the public at large can’t see how it works and whether anything suspect is hidden there.
The Best Private Browser For You
All of the above offer better security and privacy than the average browser that came with your device. And the three mentioned here are far from the only options. Other private browsers with commendable privacy and security measures include:
- Brave Browser – Uses onion routing similar to Tor in private windows, but has an emphasis on cryptocurrency some might not like (which you can disable if you still want to use Brave).
- Waterfox – Built on Firefox’s code with more stringent privacy measures. It does run data through Google’s SafeBrowsing service, but users can opt out of that.
- Opera – A privacy-focused browser that updates every few weeks and comes with a built-in VPN feature.
- Mulvad – Still relatively new, but made by the people who built Tor with strong anti-fingerprinting features.
Which one you choose depends on your needs and level of technical knowledge. If anonymity is paramount, Tor is a great option. If you’re just looking for a more secure daily driver for the internet, Firefox might be best. What matters is taking steps to be smarter about your online security, and since these browsers are all free, that’s pretty easy to do.
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