Browser your way to privacy.

Most people spend years on the internet without ever once thinking about their browser. It’s just the thing you click to get to the internet — like a window you don’t think about until someone tells you it’s a two-way mirror.

Because for a lot of people, it is. If you’re using Chrome, Google is watching what you search, what you read, how long you stay, and where you go next. That information feeds directly into the same advertising machine that makes Google one of the most profitable surveillance companies on earth.¹

The good news: switching browsers is one of the easiest privacy upgrades you can make. And two of them stand out.

Brave

Brave is built on the same foundation as Chrome — so it looks familiar, loads the same websites, and works with most of the same extensions — but it strips out everything Google added for its own benefit and replaces it with protections that work for you.

Out of the box, Brave blocks over 97% of trackers, stops cross-site cookies, and protects you from fingerprinting — the sneaky technique advertisers use to identify your browser even after you clear your cookies.² It does this by slightly randomizing the signals your browser sends out, so every website sees something a little different. You become much harder to follow.

It also upgrades your connections to HTTPS automatically, which means the sites you visit can’t as easily be spied on by your internet provider or anyone else on the network.³

None of this requires any setup. You download Brave, open it, and it’s already working. That’s a pretty big deal.

Safari

If you’re on an iPhone, iPad, or Mac, Safari is already on your device — and it’s doing more than most people realize.

Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) uses on-device machine learning to identify and block the trackers that follow you from site to site.⁴ It limits third-party cookies and strips tracking parameters out of URLs — those long strings of characters at the end of links that let companies know exactly where you came from and what you clicked on.

Safari 26 took things even further with Advanced Fingerprinting Protection turned on by default, targeting the techniques websites use to build a profile of your device even without cookies.⁵ And if you subscribe to iCloud+, Private Relay routes your Safari traffic through two separate servers — so neither Apple nor your internet provider can see the full picture of where you’re browsing.⁶

Safari also shows you a Privacy Report right from the toolbar — a live look at how many trackers it’s blocked on any given page. It’s satisfying in a slightly infuriating way.

Which one is right for you?

If you’re on Apple devices, Safari is a great default — it’s fast, private, and already there. If you want something that goes further, or you’re on Windows or Android, Brave is the move. It’s free, open source, and requires zero configuration to start protecting you.

Either way, you’re miles ahead of Chrome.

What if you have to use Chrome?

Sometimes Chrome isn’t a choice — it’s a requirement. Maybe your workplace runs on Google tools, maybe you need it for a specific integration, maybe it’s just too baked into your workflow to walk away from right now. That’s real, and we get it.

If Chrome is your situation, the single best thing you can do is install Privacy Badger — a free browser extension made by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the nonprofit that’s been fighting for your digital rights since 1990. Privacy Badger automatically learns to block hidden trackers based on how they behave, not just a blocklist. It watches what’s following you across sites and shuts it down.⁷

Here’s how to add it:

Go to the Privacy Badger page on the Chrome Web Store
Click Add to Chrome
Click Add extension to confirm
The Privacy Badger icon will appear in your toolbar — it’s working immediately
Privacy Badger — Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) ↩

Just know that even with Privacy Badger installed, Chrome is still Google’s browser. Google can still see what you’re doing and where you’re going. Privacy Badger helps, but it doesn’t change who built the house. Use it as damage control, not a solution — and switch to Brave or Safari when you can.

Download Brave