Which browser offers the most security?

The best browsers for protecting your privacy depend on your needs and knowledge, but Firefox, Tor, and Epic offer unique features and functions that will help you keep your data private online.

Try each of them to find out which one is best for you and for which situations.

Why do I need a private browser?

If you don't watch your browsing data, you should. We use browsers for everything from banking to social media, email and online shopping, and a lot of sensitive data is shared. We should be careful where this information goes, who can see it, and how (or if) our data is stored.

Because our data is the main source of profit for big tech companies, they have an incentive 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-minded browsers can cut most or all of this annoying data collection from your online experience.

Even with cookies blocked, browser fingerprinting can create a snapshot of your online behavior. In the wrong hands, this can be used to identify or impersonate you, even though companies claim to anonymize the user data collected. Even if criminals don't gain access to your bank account, they can get enough information to commit identity theft.

The best browsers for privacy

The best privacy browsers offer strong protection without sacrificing functionality and are easy to use. Common features of a good privacy browser include:

• Block browser fingerprinting
• Browsing with HTTPS only
• Cookie blockers
• Very strong encryption measures, e.g. “onion routing” of the Tor browser

And other. The browsers we will look at here today have some or all of these features and more. Even some stock browsers, such as Safari, have upped their game enough to include privacy protection and may be the right choice for casual internet use.

1. Mozilla Firefox

Created by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, Firefox has been focused on privacy since the beginning and is considered by many to be the best non-corporate privacy browser. It is available on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS.

Firefox's code is open source, which makes it difficult to hide any suspicious widgets that could be used to secretly collect your browsing data. Right out of the box, it is set to block:

• social media trackers
• cross-site tracking cookies
• monitoring in private windows
• crypto miners
• fingerprinting scripts

Firefox also sends DNS requests to a secure resolver. Secure resolvers are DNS servers configured for extra security. They can act as an extra filter between you and the internet, blocking website addresses known to distribute viruses and malware, or blocking communication with known botnets.

If you need tighter protection, you can enable them in the settings menu or set a custom privacy level. Add-ons let you do even more with options like an in-browser VPN, which can be useful if you need to connect to a public place or an unsecured network.

That said, Firefox is set to send browsing and usage information back to Mozilla when you first download it. You can disable this feature by unchecking a few boxes in the Security & Privacy area of ​​the settings menu.

2. Tor

The original completely private browser still holds true today. Many of the privacy features used by Tor have been adopted by other browsers. Firefox, for example, uses a similar method to that of Tor to resist browser fingerprinting.

One of the main reasons why Tor is so useful for private browsing is its layered encryption. Encrypts user data three times for three different relay nodes. Each node is operated by a volunteer and decodes only a portion of the data, meaning that no one person ever has the entire message.

Το Tor κάνει επίσης ό,τι μπορεί για να κάνει όλα τα παράθυρα του προγράμματος περιήγησης να φαίνονται ίδια, αντιστεκόμενο έτσι στην αποτύπωση των δακτυλικών αποτυπωμάτων του προγράμματος περιήγησης, αφού όλοι οι χρήστες που περιηγούνται με το Tor φαίνονται ίδιοι. Μπλοκάρει τα cookies και τους ανιχνευτές και καθαρίζει την προσωρινή μνήμη περιήγησης κάθε φορά που το κλείνετε μετά από μια συνεδρία. Όλα αυτά τα χαρακτηριστικά σημαίνουν ότι το Tor είναι σχεδόν ασυναγώνιστο για ιδιωτική περιήγηση στο διαδίκτυο.

However, due to the complex login process it must go through to hide data, Tor can be slower than other browsers. Also, it doesn't work with some plugins due to its security and protection measures. For the tech-savvy person looking for anonymous browsing (eg journalists who need to research the dark web), Tor is a great choice, but it probably won't end up being your everyday browser unless you can dig deeper in the advanced settings.

3. Epi

If you're a Chrome user looking for an easy change, this might be the private browser for you. Based on Chromium, Epic has all the privacy protections you'd expect from a more secure browser, and its interface is almost identical to Chrome.

This browser had a built-in VPN-like feature, hiding your real IP address while browsing the web. It also claims to block ultrasonic signals to protect against NUIT (near ultrasonic inaudible Trojan) attacks, in which attackers send commands to a target's devices via near-ultrasonic sound waves that are inaudible to humans. Epic also performs searches using DuckDuckGo by default and prioritizes connections to sites that have Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption, while not keeping browser history.

But there are also some downsides to Epic. When tested using the EFF's Cover Your Tracks tool, the default privacy settings weren't much better than Chrome, saying there is some protection, but the browser still has gaps.

You should enable stronger privacy protection measures by clicking the umbrella icon in the upper right corner of the browser window to better protect against tracking. Epic's source code is also not available to the public, which means the general public can't see how it works and if anything fishy is lurking there.

The best private browser for you

All of the above offer better security and privacy than the average browser that comes with your device. All three listed here are far from the only options. Other private browsers with commendable privacy and security measures include:

• Brave Browser – Uses Tor-like onion routing in private windows, but emphasizes cryptocurrency that some may not like (which you can disable if you still want to use Brave).
• Waterfox – Based on Firefox code with stricter privacy protection measures. It runs data through Google's SafeBrowsing service, but users can opt out of it.
• Opera – A privacy-focused browser that is updated every few weeks and has a built-in VPN feature.
• Soils – Still relatively new, but built by the people who built Tor with strong anti-fingerprinting features.

Which one you choose depends on your needs and your level of technical knowledge. If anonymity is paramount, Tor is a great choice. If you're just looking for a safer everyday guide to the web, Firefox might be the best.

What matters is taking steps to be smarter about your online safety, and since all of these browsers are free, that's pretty easy to do.