Browser Privacy

So you've decided to use a VPN but is that really enough? Unfortunately the truth is not really. Why? Because your browser most likely still collects data about you regardless. Incognito modes are highly misleading as well, generally speaking all that they do is not leave footprints behind on your own computer. Additionally the moment you sign into a personal account even using the most privacy centered methods will not help you. Signing into a personal account while using a privacy centric browser and VPN is like a spy handing over his personal passport at the airport.

Many browsers do not have your privacy in mind

Nothing is free, and that includes browsers. It costs time and money for companies to keep browsers up to date with the latest features to keep you using them. Companies exist to create revenue, while they may exist I've never seen a browser that you paid for directly. So how do these companies create revenue from "free" browser? If you guessed selling your data you would be correct. In fact even privacy centric browsers sell data, the difference is that instead of selling personal data they will sell meta-data that cannot be used to identify you.

So which browsers are good and which browsers are bad?

I won't mention the bad ones because it has become quite common knowledge which companies are the extreme offenders when it comes to disregarding your privacy. There is a ton of minor web-browsers that nobody has ever heard of that are privacy centric but here are my top 3:

Brave
Brave comes in at #1 for me for Desktop clients. It is very easy to use, fast and Tor can be integrated right into the browser(More on Tor later). Check out braves website here and their download link here.

DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo is better known for their privacy centric search engine, but they also have an amazing browser for Android and IOS. They are known to be very outspoken against privacy infringements. You can find them on the Google Play on Android and the App store on IOS. Also check out their search engine at duckduckgo.com.

Firefox
Firefox is another great privacy centered browser. However you will have to change the settings of the browser in order for it to be considered a real private browser. Check them out at mozilla.org.

One final note is that with the exception of the DuckDuckGo browser these browsers use google as the default search engine which probably the least private search engine out there. I highly recommend downloading the DuckDuckGo extension for these browsers so that by default you use DuckDuckGo's search engine, which, by the way, is not full of ads and tends to provide much better search results.

Tor Browser, and the NSA/CSE

Now to address the elephant in the room. What is the Onion Network and who is really spying on us?
In 2013 Whistle-Blower Edward Snowden leaked perhaps the creepiest and most important information the world has seen in modern times. Our governments (The NSA in the United States and CSE in Canada) have been secretly spying on us for years. The amount of hidden tracking that has(and still is) going on shocked many of us but most of us shrugged our shoulders and went on about our days.

In order to counter terrorism these government agencies have setup spyware in almost every single piece of software and device imaginable. This revelation revealed in 2013 is largely what created a huge push for internet privacy. End to end encryption became hugely popular. But encryption methods are only as good as the key to the encryption. Software developed in the USA and Canada are often forced by law to put backdoors into their products for these government agencies to have access to hidden data. If you study cybersecurity one of the first things you would learn are that backdoors are huge security risks and can be exploited by hackers as well. This is why it is incredibly important to use a VPN that is legally based in a jurisdiction that does not force the developers to put backdoors into their software.

The Snowden leaks lead me to the tour de force of internet privacy. Perhaps the one thing that is most capable of avoiding government surveillance.

The Tor Browser (I've saved the most secure for last) is probably as private as private gets for surfing the internet. In my experience with the browser however it is not the most user friendly. Such is the cost of privacy. The Tor Browser also provides access to the largest onion network. An onion network provides unbreakable encryption levels that are very difficult to comprehend but is best explained as peeling an onion -once you peel one layer of an onion you're faced with another layer-.

While I certainly do not condone our governments insistence on mass surveillance in order to stop crimes, I'll also admit that using onion networks to circumnavigate government surveillance is a heck of a lot of work. It doesn't stop at just using Tor browser and you are anonymous either, while the encryption methods may currently be unbreakable governments have found other ways of keeping track of what happens on Onion networks such as time analysis. Additionally it is difficult to say how much data your operating system farms from you so to become truly anonymous on the internet you have to switch to a privacy OS with TAILS probably being the most commonly known one.

The future of internet privacy

Unfortunately the battle for internet privacy is an uphill battle. Those who are for mass surveillance are pushing bills to illegalize end-to-end encryption methods. It's in the best interest of big-tech companies to have less privacy so they can sell more of your data. Privacy motivated companies are significantly less well funded to fight back and the general public are indifferent towards the matter. Super computers with millions of times the processing power of a household PC still are not fast enough to decrypt current encryption methods. However quantum computing is just starting to take off and it is quite likely quantum computers will indeed be able to break the unbreakable.

With all that being said be very careful with what you say on the internet, especially on social media. One end product of data mining is your personal data being sold to potential employers during background checks! So if you wouldn't want to talk about it in a job interview consider not posting it on the internet!