With the sheer amount of information that can be extracted from your internet use, having a privacy-oriented browser has become essential to protecting your internet activity—and bigger browsers are catching on.
Last year, Google announced that it would start blocking third-party ads on Google Chrome in 2022, replacing it with the Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), which Google claims is a “privacy-first” and “interest-based” advertising technology (you can read our take on that here).
Read more: What are cookies?
The company has just announced a delay to the rollout—it’s now expected to happen in 2023 instead, leaving Chrome users the option of either waiting for two more years, or installing a third-party cookie blocker on their browser.
Fortunately, at least three other browsers already block third-party cookies by default, so if you’re looking to make a switch to a more privacy-oriented browser, consider one of these alternatives.
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Safari
Since the release of Safari 13.1, Apple now blocks all third-party cookies in Safari by default.
From its webkit blog:
Cookies for cross-site resources are now blocked by default across the board. This is a significant improvement for privacy since it removes any sense of exceptions or “a little bit of cross-site tracking is allowed.”
If you have an Apple device, Safari will already be installed and ready for use.
Firefox
Firefox, produced by the non-profit organization Mozilla, is flush with security features that any internet user will appreciate: phishing and malware protection, blocking reported attack websites/web forgeries, and warning users when a site is trying to install add-ons.
In February, Firefox introduced Total Cookie Protection, which “ensures that no cookies can be used to track you from site to site as you browse the web.” This feature contains cookies to the website you visit, preventing it from being shared with another website.
Brave
Brave is also packed with security features—as soon as you launch the Brave browser on your device, it blocks all ads and trackers by default. It even shows you how many the browser has blocked, and how much time you’ve saved by not needing to load them.
Brave uses filter lists from the EasyList and EasyPrivacy projects, the uBlock Origin project, as well as its own generated lists, which lets it block unwanted advertising and tracking resources from loading in your browser.
Stop third-party cookies in their tracks
Third-party cookies can collect a lot about your online activity, from your google searches to your shopping habits. Using a privacy-oriented browser that stops third-party trackers from following you around the internet is a first and very important step in protecting your online privacy. If you aren’t using one yet, you should start now.
Read more: How to turn off browsing history
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Comments
I’m using Firefox and constantly see cookies from websites that I have not visited. There’s custom settings that I haven’t tried but on default it’s not great.
I use Brave for my laptop and Android devices and I believe that it is the most secure browser. Brave also protects from browser fingerprinting by generating a randomized fingerprint result as tested by the eff.org Cover Your Tracks browser testing tool on both of my devices.
Another effective testing tool is browserleaks.com which tests a number of different browser parameters.
Brave is da bomb
Why no mention of duckduckgo browser ?
i use and like Brave.
I would pay for a Browser developed by serious privacy specialists
I find that there is always a trade off with these Ad-blockers I my case access to a site is blocked until I switch off the blocker or in the case of online banking I am told try later. When I switch off the anti tracking there is no problem with online banking. Do you have a solution for this?
Vivaldi is also a great browser for privacy, it has all the great features as the other three.
I use these browsers. That’s good. Express VPN however does not work any longer to protect me. I bought a years subscription, it worked, then it didn’t’t work. Could get no answers through your customer service portals.