Useful Links#
Virus Scanner
How Secure are all the Browsers
Browser Sandbox
Online: https://www.browserling.com/
Selfhostet: https://www.kasmweb.com/browser-isolation
Scam Site Scanner
Browser Fingerprinting
Browser Fingerprinting Resistence test: https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/
What Websites Know about you: https://www.deviceinfo.me/
Is your Browser Unique: https://amiunique.org/
Is your Account Login Information Puplic
Browser Recomendations
Tor: https://www.torproject.org/download/
Librewolf: https://librewolf.net/
Brave: https://brave.com/download/
The most secure OS for browsers ever
Whonix: https://www.whonix.org/
What is a Browser#
Let’s start simple. What is a browser anyway? In short, it is an application that allows you to display web pages from the Internet. Nowadays, however, it is much more than that. We can save our passwords like with a password manager, we can open PDF documents in them, build applications on them etc.
In addition, we do almost everything in our browsers these days, think about how often you open your browser to do something, be it email, watch YouTube, social media, search for things, manage servers, listen to music, buy something online, etc.
It is therefore incredibly important that we protect our browsers or at least know what to protect and how secure browsers are.
Which browser should you use?#
I know that there are several browsers and Chrome is still very popular. Nevertheless, you should know one thing, there are technically hardly any browsers. What do I mean by that? Chrome is based on a browser called Chromium, the same goes for Brave, Edge, Opera etc.
The only other unique browser is Firefox and Tor, Librewolf, MulvadBrowser, for example, are based on it.
So in the end you choose a version of Chromium or Firefox.
Of course, these browsers are customized and have features that other browsers don’t have. Brave is a good example, as it has many features for Web3, cryptocurrencies, its own Brave AI, etc.
But which browser should you use? In itself, it doesn’t really matter, but I still have a few recommendations if security and a certain degree of anonymity are important to you.
Browser Recommendations#
The recommendations I have are all mostly Firefox based except Brave. Why is that?
The answer is simple, Chrome’s Manifest 3, which no longer allows adblockers to be used. It’s not that I hate ads but it’s still a security problem, often ad banners lead to malware sites, for a while Google had their ad links in there search engine showing malware as the first link instead of the real site.
Here is a good video of what I am talking about:
It is therefore important to be able to use an adblocker and all browsers that I recommend can use them and have strong security on top of that without having to adjust much.
The adblocker that I recommend and many of these browsers have installed by default is Ublock Origin:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/
Please use it you will have a hard time downloading malware by mistake.
Librewolf Browser#
Librewolf is a fork of Firefox. It uses Ublock by default to block ads and malware but not only that. It has incredibly good fingerprinting protection and is very lightweight. So it needs very few resources.
You can read all about it here:
https://librewolf.net/docs/features/
Download: https://librewolf.net/installation/
Tor Browser#
Tor browser is also a fork of Firefox, but has been adapted for the Tor Protocol. There are so many articles and videos about the darknet that are absolut garbage, but that’s not the topic today.
Tor is my recommendation if you use it in combination with Whonix, Tor alone does not make you anonymous, especially if you use it on Windows or Mac. It only helps you to use the darknet or hidenservices.
So the question is what you need it for. Nevertheless, it is a fantastic browser if you want at least hide your IP.
Download Tor: https://www.torproject.org/download/
Download Whonix: https://www.whonix.org/
Brave Browser#
Brave is special, it is Chromium based but leans heavily against Google. They even sued google once:
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=Brave+sues+google&ia=web
It still supports Manifest 2 and can therefore still use adblockers, and it is one of the only browsers I know that supports Web3 natively. It also has some features that may be of interest to people.
It’s not a bad browser all round, I personally just find it has too many features that I don’t need. But still it gets a full recommendation from me.
Download: https://brave.com/download/
General setting recommendations#
There are a few things that I recommend that you should set so that you have a little more security.
Disable automatic downloading#
When you download something, it often downloads it automatically to the Downloads folder. This is a nice thing but also bad, because websites can also start downloads without you having pressed anything.
To prevent this, you can set your browser’s download settings so that the browser always asks where to save the file.
The advantage is clear: malware can no longer simply download itself over your Browser.
Set permisions to Blockt.#
In browsers, you can set what the browser is allowed to access. This can be the GPS position, the microphone, the camera, etc.
These should be set to Blocked. The reason is clear: if a website tries to use your microphone without permission, it will not be able to access it.
You can also add exceptions, which you can do for websites that you allow access to your Microphone etc.
Recommendations for browser analysis and security#
We are now finished with the browsers themselves. But I still have a few recommendations for websites that you can use.
How Secure is a Browser?#
If you ever wondered what exactly a browser protects you from, Prvacytest is a good site. It tests a number of things and lists how the browsers perform in terms of security and Anonymity.
Virus scanner#
Virustotal is an online virus scanner. Of course you should not upload any sensitive data here, but if you download an exe, for example, and want to be sure that it is not malware. It is not a bad choice because it uses about 60 virus scanners so you can be sure that it recognizes the malware.
CAUTION, however, it does not always recognize everything, especially if it is new malware. So please always think about what you are downloading and doing. Virus scanners are not a thing that protects you from everything, most of the time they only protect you from things that you would avoid with common sense anyway, but more on that an other time.
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/home/upload
Browser Sandbox#
A browser sandbox is an isolated environment from which software cannot escape. It is perfect for testing whether a site has malware or not as you can test as you like without fear of infecting your PC.
I have two recommendations here. One is online and the other one is Selfhosted.
Online: https://www.browserling.com/
Selfhostet: https://www.kasmweb.com/browser-isolation
Scam Site Database#
Have you ever wondered if a site is just scam? On Scamvoid you can enter a URL and see if it is known for scam. This way you can quickly avoid some problems.
Browser Fingerprinting#
Browser fingerprinting is a complicated subject. In short, it is the ability to recognize you based on your hardware and software. It would be too much to explain here how to protect yourself, but I have a few pages where you can check your resistance and what information you give to a website and how unique your browser is.
Browser Fingerprinting Resistence test: https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/
What Websites Know about you: https://www.deviceinfo.me/
Is your Browser Unique: https://amiunique.org/
I will write an article sometime when I have time but if you are interested in the topic I recommend you to read the Whonix documentation in general, there you will learn a lot about security and how to stay Anonymous.
https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Documentation
Is your Account Login Information Puplic#
Have you ever asked yourself. Has my account possibly been hacked? It’s good that you’re asking yourself this question, because on Have i been pwned you can quickly find out whether your account is part of a database leaked on the darknet or not. By the way, if you have been hacked, please follow this guide: https://youtu.be/HUR4QOHEurY
The most secure OS for browsers ever#
And last but not least, the best and really one of the best operating systems if you need security.
I can hardly describe how much this OS does please read it yourself.
Whonix is built specifically for Tor and is used in a VM. For all beginners I recommend to use Whonix with Virtualbox.
https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
If you want to learn how to use Whonix I recommend this Youtube video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr1qpz8oNiY
Support me#
I hope this guide has helped you a lot. I would be very happy if you would join my Patreon or donate with Paypal. I am grateful for any support.
Thank you very much for reading and for your time.
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