Abstract
We study six browsers: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Brave Browser, Microsoft Edge and Yandex Browser. Chrome is by far the most popular browser, followed by Safari and Firefox. Between them these browsers are used for the great majority of web access. Brave is a recent privacyorientated browser, Edge is the new Microsoft browser and Yandex is popular amongst Russian speakers (second only to Chrome).
In summary, based on our measurements we find that the browsers split into three distinct groups from this privacy perspective.
- In the first (most private) group lies Brave
- In the second Chrome, Firefox and Safari
- And in the third (least private) group lie Edge and Yandex.
Used “out of the box” with its default settings Brave is by far the most private of the browsers studied. We did not find any use of identifiers allowing tracking of IP address over time, and no sharing of the details of web pages visited with backend servers
References
Web Browser Privacy: What Do Browsers Say When They Phone Home? https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf
Brave beats other browsers in privacy study
Categories: Cyber Security, information privacy, privacy
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