Cool Browsers

January 22nd, 2023

Browsers are pretty neat. You need them to do stuff on the internet. The problem is, some browsers (chrome, edge) spy on you. You don't want that. So here is some browsers (in no particular order) that are pretty good at being browsers and also not spying on you. Some of them even come with adblock installed!

1 - TOR Browser

TL;DR: TOR Browser reroutes your traffic so the bad people don't see it, it blockers all trackers, and is also very slow.

TOR Browser is an internet browser based on firefox. TOR stands for The Onion Router. Basically, when you connect to the interwebs, TOR reroutes your traffic through three nodes, and encrypts them, then the nodes decrypt them before sending them to the server that you connected to (e.g. duck duck go search). This way nobody knows what you're doing. Node one knows that someone is connecting to the internet. Node two knows nothing. Node three knows that somebody is going to whatever website you put it. Your ISP, the government etc. know nothing. TOR browser by default blocks all javascript and cookies so you don't have to worry about pesky trackers. However, because you are connecting to three different servers before going to where you wanted to go, TOR is often very slow. A lot of people use TOR, however very few set up their own relay meaning that a huge amount of traffic is being carried by only a few people. Use TOR if you want no one to know what you're doing and you're not using anything that heavily relies on javascript (e.g. youtube). TOR can also be used to connect to the "dark web", which is really a weird way of saying TOR hidden services. As of today 22/01/2023 TOR is experiencing a huge DDOS meaning that many TOR hidden services such as dread are down. Overall, use TOR is you want nobody to find out what you're doing, and don't mind the incredibly slow speed.

2 - Firefox

TL;DR: Firefox is open-source and is what the cool kids base their browser off, but you'll need to harden it yourself.

Mozilla Firefox is a free & open source web browser developed by Mozilla. Firefox isn't based off chromium which means some websites will load slightly differently, but you also don't have to worry about chromium manifest v3 spyware etc. Most cool kids browsers are based off Firefox. Vanilla firefox (firefox without any changes) isn't secure, so you'll need to mess with the security settings and install extensions (such as uBlock origin). When setting up Firefox, visit FFProfile https://ffprofile.com/#start to easily harden Firefox. Because Firefox is based off its own engine you can't install chrome extensions, although instead you can have firefox extensions.

3 - Brave

TL;DR: Brave is based on chromium. Brave comes with adblock and fingerprint blocking out of the box. Good for lazy people.

Brave is a privacy-focused search engine developed by Brave. It comes with adblocker, fingerprinting protection, tracking protection and all that stuff within the browser. Brave is based off chromium, which makes it easy to swap to if you're coming from google chrome. Brave has faced some controversy for their crypto stuff, BAT (basic attention token), but you can disable that. Overall if you don't care that much but you just want a browser that works and probably won't spy on you then use Brave. Because Brave is built upon chromium you can install chrome extensions and brave also comes with a built-in wallet (also disablable). Brave also has its own search engine (brave search) which is slowly transitioning to using it's own results.