Defining Privacy
First, privacy may mean privacy from other people with access to your device. You might not want the fact that you searched for a gift for someone in your household to be discovered by someone that shares access to your computer. More concerning is the scenario where a person in an abusive relationship, for example, may not want someone else in the household to know they’ve searched for help. Second, you could mean that you want privacy between sites you visit. At one point or another, you might have noticed that advertisements for an item you’ve searched for now appear on several sites you visit. That’s because activity and ad trackers often operate across multiple sites. Third, you likely also want privacy over the connections from your device to a website. Your browser relies on your local network connection (often over Wi-Fi), which is routed through your internet service provider, then over the internet to a destination website. Each step in that process represents a potential place your privacy might leak information. Fourth, many people also prefer privacy from governments. In some countries, government agencies actively monitor and/or restrict access to information on the internet. Human rights activists, academics, and innovators may wish to keep internet browsing activity unknown to officials. But a fully private web browsing experience that reveals no information whatsoever about you as you browse can be difficult to achieve. Most web browsers reveal at least some basic information to sites you visit. To get some sense of what a site might “know” about you, visit What every Browser knows about you by Robin Linus and Cover Your Tracks from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. You’ll soon see that your browser may reveal your location, device hardware, software, and connection speed. These sites also can show whether or not your browser protects you from tracking ads or invisible trackers.
How Were These Browsers Chosen?
As of 2023, many people use Chrome on desktops, Safari on macOS and iOS, and either Chrome or Edge on Windows systems. While each of these companies takes steps to secure these browsers, people are not able to fully audit the code in these browsers. And since Google, Apple, and Microsoft do not provide access to all of the code, many computer privacy professionals reasonably consider these browsers to be less trusted than browsers for which all of the code is publicly available. The five browsers featured below rely on open source code, with specific customizations and configurations made (or available) in favor of privacy. If you search a bit, you’ll find many more customized versions of browsers built from either the Firefox or Chromium code. The selected browsers are relatively widely used and frequently updated.
You can also connect specifically to sites intended to be used with Tor. These sites, identified with a .onion suffix, are intended to permit people secure and private access to services that might not otherwise be feasible. For example, someone might use Tor to connect to DuckDuckGo.onion or Facebook.onion sites from within a country where access to these services is blocked for most browsers.
Brave also gives you simple sliders to block scripts and enable fingerprinting protection. Fingerprinting refers to the way that sites combine general information about you to create a profile. As a simple example, your location and the number of apps you have installed might be enough to uniquely identify you. Brave is available for all major platforms, including Windows, macOS, and Linux, as well as Android and iOS.
Firefox also lets you add extensions, which can add functionality as well. For example, you might add the Privacy Badger and HTTPS:// everywhere extensions, both from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, to block ads and encrypt the connection between your browser and websites, respectively.
On an iPhone or iPad, Firefox Focus can also serve as a content blocker for Safari. If you enable this option, the app will block ads and trackers as you browse with Safari. Firefox Focus prominently displays a trash can icon on both Android and iOS. Tap the trash can and the app immediately erases your browsing history. When Tracking Protection is turned on, the app also shows a shield that displays how many trackers Firefox Focus has blocked from a site.
But DuckDuckGo also offers dedicated Android and iOS apps. The apps block ads, analytics, and social trackers. Wherever possible, they also encrypt the connection from your browser to your destination website. DuckDuckGo also lets you bookmark sites. Similar to Firefox Focus, DuckDuckGo displays a fire icon on both Android and iOS. Tap the fire icon and confirm, then the app will immediately erase your browsing history. Any bookmarks you’ve saved, though, will remain, so you can still access those sites. DuckDuckGo also displays a Privacy Grade. Tap the grade to see what the grade would be without tracking blocking (e.g., “D”) along with the grade as a result of tracking blocking (e.g., “B”). DuckDuckGo draws from the TOSDR.org site, also known as Terms of Service: Didn’t Read, to evaluate each site’s privacy policies. These policies, along with the quantity of trackers blocked, and availability of an encrypted connection, factor into the grade.
