Privacy Browsers, which ones to choose? The guide
Users who value their privacy are also careful when choosing the most suitable browser. In fact, a world opens up here:
5' min read
5' min read
Privacy you want, browser you go. Users who value their privacy are also careful when choosing the most suitable browser. Actually, a world opens up here: browsers designed with privacy at their heart are many and tend to excel at different things. In short, users should start by asking themselves what type or level of privacy they value most or what they want to protect themselves from: from surveillance or advertising customisation or the possibility of tracking their connection, for instance.
Privacy in browsers, then, is not just an individual choice. It has social and economic repercussions. Firstly because it impacts the main business underlying the network (social media and search engines in primis): advertising tracking. Secondly, because a greater awareness of these tools can also serve to rebalance the balance of power between citizens, on the one hand, and corporations and governments on the other, whose interest in our data tends to worry digital rights associations more and more. Among them, the historic Eff (Electronic frontier foundation), which not surprisingly continuously updates its analyses on which browsers are best for privacy.
Privacy Browsers, what they are
For those who are not so picky and would still like to improve their surfing privacy, it is enough to know this: although their offerings vary, these browsers generally do not sell surfing history to third parties (such as advertisers); they also limit the data collected about us because they block those tracking systems embedded in websites.
It means that various privacy functions are integrated into these browsers by default, where otherwise, with ordinary browsers, we would have to undertake to change settings or install ad hoc extensions to avoid targeted advertising and prevent data collection by third parties. The most popular browsers to such are Brave, DuckDuckGo, Firefox, Epic and Tor.
Privacy protections depend on the browser. These include blocking the installation of third-party trackers and cookies that record user activity on websites and blocking targeted advertisements, among others. Tor is an exception because it routes traffic in a way that hides the user's unique IP address, which is another way third parties can link him to his web activity and identify his location. Other privacy browsers offer users a virtual private network option to achieve the same result, but often for a fee.
