Microsoft also makes money from targeted advertising and has a long record of violating its users’ privacy (new window).Īpple markets itself as a champion of its users’ privacy, but it fully cooperated with the NSA’s PRISM spying program (new window) that Edward Snowden exposed in 2013. Google’s entire business model is to invade our privacy so it can better target us with highly personalized ads. But should we trust them to respect our privacy? These browsers are undoubtedly secure, as they have numerous highly effective protections against hackers. That’s because they, like most popular browsers, use proprietary closed code, so we cannot know how they handle your data. You might notice that many of the most popular browsers, namely Google Chrome but also Apple Safari and Opera, aren’t included in our list above. However, we were able to assemble a list of seven open-source browsers that respect your privacy to varying degrees. There are hundreds of browsers out there, so we could not examine them all. In theory, your browser could send a record of everything you do online back to its developers - even what you type into fields on individual web pages.įor that reason, we at Proton feel it’s important to explain to people which browsers they can use if they want to keep their online activity private. Your browser has direct access to troves of your most personal and intimate data. And if you care about privacy, accessing a service using its website exposes much less of your data (new window) than using its app. Thanks to the popularity of apps, the browser is less important on mobile platforms, but it’s still the main way to access most content on the web.

On desktop PCs and laptops, it’s your primary means of accessing the world wide web and other internet services. Your web browser is your window into the online world. This post has been completely refreshed on November 28, 2022 Last update on DecemPublished on December 9, 2019

Brave third party cookies