Brave is the internet browser that offers the most privacy, while Edge and Yandex do not offer any
The School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College Dublin has published an interesting study on the six main browsers on the market. Saying study analyzes the level of privacy of the six internet browsers most used today. Have been analyzed Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Brave Browser, Microsoft Edge and Yandex Browser.
These tests, explained in the study carried out, are quite simple to replicate and have been carried out in a uniform way. All browsers tested have been subjected to the same tests with no exceptions. The truth is that the study is quite revealing as to which of all is the one that offers us the most privacy.
Six internet browsers subjected to a privacy test
For the tests, the shared data has been evaluated in the following scenarios:
- First start of a new browser installation
- When the browser closes and restarts
- When we paste a URL in the top bar
- By typing a URL in the top bar
- When the browser is inactive
This study performs a classification into three categories according to the data collected. Brave stands out, which has its own category:
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 that would allow the tracking of the IP address over time, and we did not share the details of the web pages visited with back-end servers.
Indicates the study
Browsers that offer less privacy
Firefox, Safari and Chrome would be in a second level, with better privacy than Brave but more than Edge and Yandex. At this second level, it has been found that information from visited websites is shared with back-end servers through the search autocomplete feature.
Web addresses are returned to these servers in real time as you type in the search bar. The data is tagged with an ID linked to the browser instance, which includes the user's IP. Said ID persists in browser restarts, linking the user's web activity and IP over time.
These three browsers allow improving user privacy, but this is unknown to most users and they do not apply it. Firefox also had an open WebSocket for push notifications tied to a unique ID. Said WebSocket could be used for tracking and is not easy to disable.
Yandex and Edge bind the ID to the device's hardware, allowing the tracking to continue after uninstalling, formatting, and reinstalling. Furthermore, the study indicates that it cannot be deactivated in any way. For both cases, it was also detected that they transmit information from the web that is not related to the autocomplete function.
