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Best Browser for Privacy Definition
When we talk about the best browser for privacy, it seems that everything has already been saying Chrome is the bad guy, Firefox is the good guy, and the rest are in amid. The reality is more complex, I’m afraid, and nonsense doesn’t help.
First, because you cannot trust. I’m talking about the best browsers for privacy are wholesaling and what the user does about it.
Be that as it may, entrances can be deceiving, and this is what comes to remember a new study on the subject that they collect in gHacks whose conclusions should make you reflect. The headline that summarizes them and that I did not fit in the header.
Brave is the browser that respects your privacy the most, Edge the least, and Firefox and Chrome are on par, according to a study
The study in question is Web Browser Privacy:
What Do Browsers Say When They Phone Home (PDF), and it is a university paper published by the Department of Computer Science and Statistics of Dublin’s Trinity College.
In which they analyze the behavior of six web browsers: Brave, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, and Yandex.
To carry out the study, the same test was repeated several times for each browser, consisting of:
- Start the browser from a new installation / new user profile.
- Paste a URL into the address bar, hit Enter, and log user activity.
- Close browser and continue, most excellent network action.
- Start the browser from a new installation / new user profile and monitor network activity for 24 hours.
Start the browser from a new installation / new user profile, enter a URL and monitor the traffic.
- You have already seen the result. Indeed, Brave is the one that comes out the best because it is the only one that does not include persistent identifiers or share details of the pages visited with the company’s servers.
- But perhaps it is something that you expected because this is how Brave is trading as a browser that respects and protects your privacy.
Chrome vs Firefox: not what you expect
- What should surprise you is finding Chrome ahead of Firefox. What madness is this? Let me explain: both browsers include the Google search engine by default.
- Chrome includes a unique identifier per installation and collects data through application statistics.
- However, the first period you run it, it shows a dialog where you can uncheck set the browser. As the default and automatically send usage statistics and crash reports to Google.
- Of course, enabling Chrome sync means sending much more data to Google, such as browsing history, which will be secondhand to feed the user’s business profile.
- While Firefox sync does not use the data for any purpose, and this is a prevalent feature, even though the study only values behavior by default.
What is Microsoft Edge, a privacy nightmare?
- The next on the list would be Safari, and lastly, Yandex would go, but due to the limited multiplatform support of the first and the little pull that the second has in these parts, we put them aside.
- We, therefore, focus on the new Microsoft Edge, based on Chromium, which also integrates robust controls to improve your privacy outside. Because indoors is a real nightmare, according to the study.
- Microsoft Edge doesn’t just collect the same amount of data as Chrome or Firefox. Additionally, it sends persistent identifiers that can be secondhand near link requests (including location and IP address) to the company’s servers.
- As well as details of the web pages visited that do not appear to be related to the search suggestions autocomplete functions.
- To top it off, Microsoft Edge sends a unique identifier of the hardware – impossible to disable, according to the authors of the study. On which it runs, so Microsoft can track the user even if the user reinstalls the operating system.
What is the web browser that respects your privacy the most?
- As I warned you at the beginning, appearances can be deceiving. You can use Chrome with a decent level of privacy if you disable the features of yore and skip syncing.
- You can do the same with Firefox, with the advantage that the synchronization is much more respectful of your privacy.
- How long it would take to disappear, given that the bulk of Mozilla’s income comes. Via Google precisely for placing its search engine in the foreground.
- The surprises are over, then, and you already know the browser that respects your privacy the most.
- You keep sending data to Mozilla’s servers, but they don’t use it at all, it’s supposed.
- Of course, if you are not crazy enough to use it in your day to day. There are other alternatives with much more available guarantees.
- If you feel like it, you can revenue a look at them at your own risk. Googled Chromium, GNU IceCat, and Iridium Browser are, in this order, the most interesting currently.
- But don’t be stubborn either with the tweaks mentioned above, Firefox is acceptable. Also, it may demand more data than it should for itself.
- But as long as it does not use it for nefarious purposes, it is permissible. And outside doors, they are mounting it well. In any case, determining what is acceptable is up to you.
Also Read: Google is Evil – Definition, Document, Current Version, and More
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