As we fight white cis het ableist anti-poor, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, capitalist colonial culture, we must be mindful of our online activities and tools. One of the tools we use the most is our browser.
It is important to keep in mind that your browser is not stand alone. It works in conjunction with your ISP, your actual connection, device, extensions, settings, search engine, and your online behavior. So your line of defense to keep yourself secure and private has to consider all of those aspects.
This post is only about the browsers themselves and will be part of a series that will cover the other elements of what it means to be online and to protect yourself.
These are my recommendations based on who I believe is following me on different platforms. That is, people who want their data to be secure, do not want it to be taken without their consent, and a high adoption probability (many people won’t bother if there is code or programming involved in installation and setup).
There are many reasons why you want to have a secure browser. ISPs (Internet Service Providers) often take your web browsing history and give or sell it to third parties, authorities can get access to your devices, and your connection can be hacked.
Years ago, Chrome was considered a good browser. It was fast, compact, and worked better than the competition at the time. Since then, however, dozens of browsers have come out and Chrome is now not even in the top ten of safe browsers, in my opinion.
Some people want to prioritize speed, others privacy, yet others the browsing experience, etc. My recommendations are trying to find a balance of those. It is important to remember that these are highly subjective and based on preference.
I recommend three desktop browsers for this current moment. Browsers are always changing and updating so this list will no doubt also change. For now, I recommend Tor, Mullvad, and Firefox. There are others that many people like such as Brave and DuckDuckGo, but I am not including them here because many of those features can be incorporated into the three I’ve recommended.
Tor, Mullvad, and Firefox are highly customizable and thus can be tweaked as the browsing landscape changes down the line. In later posts, I will cover some of the essential extensions and customization. For now, go through the privacy settings and look through each one to set to your privacy and security threshold.
Firefox has a mobile version called Firefox Focus that is specifically made for phone speed and privacy, which is a nice option.
As a side note, incognito and privacy modes give you a false sense of privacy. They still can give away your web browsing history and even location. So do not rely on those for privacy.
Again, having a more secure browser is only one part of the setup. If you have a great safe but leave the key out then the safe isn’t very helpful.
I’ll cover some of the other elements such as keeping your data safe from your ISP, your connection, device, extensions, settings, search engine, and your online behavior in future posts.
Stay safe out there y’all!
Comments are closed.