Well I'm back again. This is where my guide stops being theory and starts becoming practice. It's also the first one where I hope everyone who reads this gets to the end not only more imformed, but also with easy steps to impliment in their day to day lives.

First up are the very tools we use to access the internet. Web Browsers and Search Engines.

If any of you are like me you've heard those terms before but don't know the difference between them. Don't worry, the two are meant to work together, and I'll explain the two of them.

Web Browsers are what displays websites to you. They determine things like window size, store cookies, and how websites interact with you.

Search Engines on the other hand are what finds websites when you put something in the search bar.

Both are essential to using the internet, and having the two of them be privacy focused is a must.

 

Web Browsers

I'll start with Web Browsers as they were the first that I focused on, and to do that I will first review my levels of privacy, and listing browsers for each one.

Level 0: "I don't like hackers" Privacy isn't a concern, only security.

Level 1: "I'm doing nothing wrong, but also nothing you need to know."

Level 2: "Data collection is theft."

Level 3: [Error 404: Not found]. The goal is to be a ghost online.

 

Level 0

Google Chrome

The web browser I'm certain most of you are using now, and statistically the most popular web browser in the world. Kept up to date, this will protect ypu from most hackers. It's also sending everything you do to Google.

 

Microsoft Edge

This one is only here because I can't figure out how to delete it. It's slightly slower than Chrome, but at least it turns on. Looking at you Internet Explorer.

 

Level 1

Brave

Built as an offshoot of Chromium(the seed for Google Chrome) this is a clean and simple web browser designed to give you privacy with as few inconveniences as possible. It works with all chrome extensions, blocks trackers and ads by default, and is highly customizable. Of all the browsers I will talk about this is probably the easiest to pick up and start using. User friendliness is on maximum.

Brave is open sourced, and has an interesting marketing scheme. Unlike Chrome, Brave has no third party ads, with first party ads only shown on the homescreen. These ads are the same for all users, and not based on individual data. Additionally Brave sells extra services such as Brave VPN and firewall. Additionally if you are into crypto, Brave will pay you to watch ads if you want.

On iPhone however, it is built around Apple's browser WebKit, so it isn't running chromium.

Here's a link to try it yourself: https://brave.com/

 

Firefox

Perhaps the most well known alternative to Chrome and Edge. Firefox unlike most other web browsers isn't based off of Chromium, but rather a different seed called Gecko.

Firefox is open sourced, and funded largely through deals with Google, where in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars a year Firefox makes Google the default search engine. Remember this, it will be important later.

Firefox on its own is alright, but you will want to manually adjust settings, and install the uBlockOrigin extension. As extensions are unusable on mobile I only recommend Firefox as a desktop browser. 

Download Firefox: https://www.firefox.com/en-US/

A guide to fixing Firefox settings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aULplHUYNNE

 

 

Level 2

Here's where browsers will start to sacrifice your daily browsing for the sake of privacy. If you want, you can have multiple browsers installed, and use one for general purposes, and another for when greater privacy is needed. If you love customizing your browsers, you should probably stick to Level 1.

 

Librewolf

Librewolf is based off Firefox, but with a bit of a different philosophy.

Librewolf is opensource, and made entirely by volunteers, to the point that they won't even accept donations.

Librewolf blocks all third party ads, and has none of its own.

Librewolf is also the first browser on this list employ a deep anti-fingerprinting technique. Normal fingerprinting in this sense refers to using unique identifiers to tell users apart. Librewolf and others turn this on its head. The idea being that a website is unable to tell two librewolf users apart from each other, creating a herd immunity. As a result of this while Librewolf technically has access to all of Firefox's browser extensions, using them defeats the purpose of Librewolf as it makes you stand out. You also have to log in to websites with every visit, cannot set websites to dark mode as a default, remember which sites are in dark mode and the browser window size may be smaller than your screen resulting in a border to fit your screen size.

In addition to the general anti-fingerprinting difficulties, I will also note that during my experimentation that Librewolf had some bugs, like Youtube audio playing while the visuals were frozen. Other than that my overall experience was largely positive. In addition, there is no Android version of Librewolf and it struggles with MacOS.

Get Librewolf: https://librewolf.net/

 

Mullvad

This browser will feel fairly similar to Librewolf, for a number of reasons.

Firstly, they are both open sourced, modified versions of Firefox that block all ads. Secondly they both employ the same heavy anti-fingerprinting strategy. This means that just like with Librewolf, any two users of Mullvad are impossible to distinguish.

However from here there are some differences. Mullvad was made as a joint effort between the TOR project and Mullvad VPN. Where it comes to funding, the TOR project is a non-profit and does the work for free. Mullad VPN is a paid subscription, and part of the reason behind the browser was to convince users to use their VPN. I'll talk more about Mullvad VPN in a different entry, but for now it's enough to know that no one profits from you using the  Mullvad browser.

Just like Librewolf the recommendation is to not modify the browser, meaning you have to log in, switch to dark mode, minimize screens and whatever else, to each website everytime you use them. Mullvad also does not save your search history, or give search suggestions. However unlike Librewolf, I didn't notice any performance issues. The browser looks a bit odd, but if you can get used to that it's a pretty seamless transition.

There are no mobile browser versions for Mullvad.

Get Mullvad: https://mullvad.net/en/browser

 

Level 3

There is only one Browser here. This is it. The king of private browsers, the undisputed champ. Part of the reason that the Mullvad browser was designed was to be a more user friendly version of this. The step beyond privacy and to anonymity.

The Tor Browser.

TOR stands for The Onion Router, and when you set it up on your computer you have all searches made through it are tripple encrypted and sent through various other Tor users before being sent out to your desired website. If that doesn't make sense, don't worry, I barely understand it myself.

If Librewolf and Mullvad are using gloves to avoid leaving a fingerprint the Tor Browser is putting your hands in acid to burn your fingerprints off. With Librewolf and Mullvad it was heavily recommended not to modify. Here it is an order that comes with a very explicate "or else."

The Tor Browser is the open source brain child of the Tor project, a non-profit aiming to bring internet privacy to everyone.

It comes with all the downsides of Mullvad but it's also slow. However, it also has some benfits. Anyone watching your internet traffic, such as a school, employeer, or ISP(Internet service provider), can see you are using the Tor Browser, but nothing else. Not what sites you visit, nothing. The websites you visit are likewise clueless as to anything about you.

It is also probably the safest way to access the Dark Net, though if you want you can also use Brave for that(though I do not recommend). I may make a blog entry on the dark web later.

I haven't actually taken the time to use this one yet, so check back in a few weeks and I might update this with more information.

While available for Windows, Linux, and Android, there is no iOS version of the TOR browser. The TOR project has an iOS browser called the Onion Browser, but I have no idea if it's good or not.

Get the Tor Browser: https://www.torproject.org/

 

I know this has been long(so please let me know if these should be shorter), but with Web Browsers out of the way I want to move on to Search Engines.

Unlike browsers I won't have a leveling system here, rather I will talk about three main points with search engines.

1. Privacy

2. Quality

3. Bias

Privacy is pretty obvious, does the search engine store and sell your searches? Quality is how relavant the responces are to your queries. Bias is how the Search Engine filters your results. This is generally only really noticeable for politics, but I believe that it is something important to keep in mind, because even if you agree with what the Search Engine shows you, it's good to be aware of how it may color your perspective. I will not say whether any particular biasing bad or not, just point them out.

The importance of choosing the right search engine cannot be overstated. We tell them things we wouldn't tell our best friend, and as stated above, Google will pay hundreds of millions of dollars a year in order to be the default(not even only, just the default) search engine on another browser.

 

I also want to quickly list what each of the browsers uses as their default search engine, though you can usually change it pretty easily.

Google Chrome and Firefox: Google Search

Edge: Bing

Brave: Brave Search

Librewolf, Mullvad, TOR: DuckDuckGo

In general you can change the default search engine by going to the browser homepage, going to settings and clicking search engines.

 

Google Search

Privacy: Not only is everything you search cataloged, but everything ypu type into the search bar is stored and sold to advertizers

Quality: Google Search, admittedly, has perhaps the best quality of results of any search engine

Bias: Google admits to actively promoting large corporate news sites it deems "trustworthy" over independant sorces. Wonder why large corperate Google would do that? It also tends to skew results to the political left, though that's an obervation and not something Google admits to.

 

Bing:

Privacy: Bing respects privacy as much as Google does.

Quality: You're kidding right? In all seriousness, Bing is better than it was a few years ago, but it still isn't as good as Google.

Bias: Bing shows many of the same biases Google does.

 

Brave Search

Privacy: Solid respect for privacy, and funded the same way that the Brave Browser is.

Quality: Unlike the rest of the search engines here, Brave doesn't source its results from Google or Bing, but rather it built it's own web crawlers to deliver its own results. It's generally pretty good, unless you need an image search, then it has problems.

Bias: Unlike any of the others Brave has a toggle at the top between left and right news sources, which I honeslty appreciate. The openness is kind of refreashing. It does still have a corperate bias regardless of affiliation.

 

DuckDuckGo

Privacy: A private Search Engine. They are funded through ads, but those ads are only sourced from a single search. For example of you search for: "computers," you might see computer ads. But when you search for "mac n' cheese," later the ads do not know that you searched for computers earlier. 

Quality: All responses are sourced from Bing, so the results are the same.

Bias: Along with having the same biases as Bing, the CEO came out and said that they were going to pioritize information that they believed to be true. This may improve on Bing's initial biases, it may make them worse. That entirely depends on how much you trust DuckDuckGo.

 

Startpage

Privacy: Startpage is a private Search Engine, funded the same way DuckDuckGo is. Additionally, Startpage offers anonymous viewing of websites, allowing you to look at(but not interact with) webpages while completely hidden.

Quality: Startpage sources its results from Google, so you get excellent quality.

Bias: Sourcing from Google, Startpage has all the same biases Google does.

 

SearX

This one is interesting as SearX is really just a moduel that you either build youself, or use someone else's. I'm not tech savey enough to do it, but apparently it works amazingly.

 

Ecosia

Privacy: This thing sells your data, but it uses the money to plant trees if you value that more.

Quality: Results are sourced from Bing

Bias: See above.

 

I hope everyone could get something from this, including easy ways to improve their daily browsing. Please respond to the poll up top it will help me improve these in the future.