I don’t know why but for some reason the title of this post made me think of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. I guess just like the movie, improving our privacy practices online is a bit of a journey, can have a few unexpected turns, but eventually we end up where we want to be.

Today I’m starting with browsers and search engines, as this is the way in which most of us browse and find what we’re looking for online. I figured as I’m discussing browsers, I might as well throw in a couple of suggestions for browser extensions or add-ons as well.

Browsers

When it comes to browsers, you’ve got plenty of options. I’ve focused on ones that market themselves as privacy-focused and privacy-preserving. Plus those which I have experience with, as always, other browsers are available.

Firefox

Let’s start with Firefox by Mozilla, which has been my standard go-to for a long time. It blocks ads and trackers and is highly customisable with various themes and add-ons.

However, lately I’ve felt like I wanted to try something new, especially with the loss of Pocket functionality and the addition of AI, I’m not completely sure of where the future of this browser fits for me. At least the option is there to utilise AI, if you want it, and it runs the models locally on your device, ensuring your data remains local which helps to preserve the privacy of your data.

Vivaldi

Vivaldi is based on Chromium, same as the Chrome browser, but with privacy in mind and even further, no AI embedded into their browser. (You can read about why on their blog.)

It was a little bit of an adjustment when I moved to Vivaldi from Firefox, but importing bookmarks was easy enough and you can utilise Vivaldi themes and (most) Chrome browser extensions. I did originally miss my Tabby Cat but I found I just needed to update my Tabs settings to allow the third party extension to control the appearance of new tabs. 😻

The Vivaldi browser does offer some great privacy features out of the box such as: ad and tracker blocker, hiding cookie banners and warnings, private windows, Proton VPN embedded into the browser, and a password manager. Though I’ve chosen to utilise a separate password manager, as Vivaldi stores passwords in the browser, which while secure, many consider less safe than using a separate password manager. I also found the blocking of ads on sites like YouTube was more seamless with the Ghostery extension installed. Vivaldi will block them, but my screen sort of flickers or refreshes while this action is taken on YouTube. I’ll cover browser extensions a bit later on.

Tor

Tor is another organisation dedicated to defending your privacy online through offering a browser with a number of features to keep you more anonymous online and block any ads, tracking, surveillance, and allows you to access content and sites your home network may have blocked. In the case of Tor, they recommend not installing additional add-ons, plug-ins or extensions to preserve your privacy on the Tor network.

Browser Extensions

Browser extensions, sometimes called add-ons, provide additional functionality within your browser. Here are a few which can help support privacy and security:

• Ghostery
• Privacy Badger
• A password manager, take your pick! If you are looking for one, I’ve found both Bitwarden and ProtonPass are good options. If you want to know more, I’ll have a future post which focuses on Password Managers.

I also found a nice comparison of privacy extensions at DuckDuckGo.

Search Engines

Our searches and search history can provide a lot of data about us, which can be used for various purposes by those who are buying this data. Plus search engines can be used to further track our movements across the web. So with this in mind, here are some which put your privacy first:

• DuckDuckGo is my default search engine. I find it returns a good set of results and they also offer other privacy-based features such as a browser and email aliasing, if you are interested. I’m less excited about their new AI search assist, but you can turn this off if you do not want them utilising AI for your search.
• StartPage I found this was set as my default search when I installed Vivaldi Browser. They hail themselves as the “world’s most private search engine” and they also have, similar to many of the services listed in this post, their own privacy focused blog called Privacy Please!
• Brave Search another privacy search engine but I did note they are heavily focused on AI, so if this is something you are actively looking to avoid, this is not the search engine for you.

Conclusion

So I hope this post has helped you in finding options for browsers, browser extensions, and search engines which you can install and use today!

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