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 hidden collection of 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 that uses Tor has 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 part of the data, meaning that no one person ever has the entire message.
Tor also does its best to make all browser windows look the same, thus resisting browser fingerprinting since all users browsing with Tor look the same. It blocks cookies and trackers and clears the browsing cache every time you close it after a session. All these features mean that Tor is almost unbeatable for private web browsing.
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. THE Source Code of Epic is also not available to the public, which means that the general public can't see how it works and if anything suspicious 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 onion routing similar to Tor in private windows, but emphasizes cryptocurrency which some may not like (which you can turn off 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.
Great, you speak well, but the article is incomplete, you did not write to us about Vivaldi. I have been using it for 2 years and it is one of the best... it has unique features that if you are a professional you will love them immediately.
Correct, it is one of the best browsers at the moment
Good evening George,
the reason I didn't add Vivaldi is because it's still new and we don't know what it's about. If you exclude Mullvad, all the rest are browsers that are more than a decade old. I keep a small cart and promise to add it to my future article as long as it still respects the privacy of its users.
Thanks :)