{"id":53200,"date":"2025-03-24T02:42:06","date_gmt":"2025-03-24T06:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/?p=53200"},"modified":"2025-03-24T02:42:06","modified_gmt":"2025-03-24T06:42:06","slug":"best-private-browser-in-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/best-private-browser-in-2025\/53200\/","title":{"rendered":"Privacy under attack: nasty surprises in Chrome, Edge, and Firefox"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the past few weeks, there\u2019s been a series of unpleasant news items on advertising and user privacy in with regard to every major browser developer \u2014 except Apple: Google allowing ad tracking through digital fingerprinting; powerful ad blockers ceasing to work in both Edge and Chrome, and Mozilla revising its license agreement seemingly showing far more interest in user data than it used to. What does each of these new developments mean, and how can we now achieve a high level of privacy?<\/p>\n

Google greenlights tracking fingerprints<\/h2>\n

Driven by regulators and user pressure, the internet giant spent years working on ways to track ad performance and deliver relevant ads without using the outdated and much-hated tracking methods: third-party cookies<\/a> and browser fingerprinting<\/a>. Google proposed FLoC, Ad Topics, and Privacy Sandbox<\/a> as replacements, but they\u2019ve probably have fallen short of the target. Therefore, the company backtracked on removing support for third-party cookies<\/a> from Chrome. Meanwhile, Google\u2019s ad network, the world\u2019s most expansive, has allowed<\/a> the collection of digital fingerprint data \u2014 including the user\u2019s IP address<\/a> \u2014 when displaying ads, as of February 2025. What this implies is that user browsers can be identified irrespective of cookie settings, incognito mode, or similar privacy measures. Digital fingerprinting is highly precise, and altering or disabling a fingerprint is a challenge.<\/p>\n

Chrome and Edge pull the plug on extensions that block ads and tracking<\/h2>\n

Chrome is based on the open-source Chromium browser, which is fully financed by Google. You could say that Chrome is Chromium with Google services built into it, but dozens of other browsers \u2014 including Edge and Opera \u2014 are also based on Chromium.<\/p>\n

Chromium developers have been gradually transitioning the browser extension platform from the Manifest V2 framework to the new Manifest V3 for years. The platform consists of several components, but the most important is the complete list of functions and capabilities provided to the extension by the browser.<\/p>\n

V3 has several advantages, but it also cuts Chrome\/Edge\/Opera\/Vivaldi extensions off from certain useful features that are vital for content blockers. Although popular plug-ins such as uBlock Origin and Adblock Plus already have a Manifest V3 implementation, only the V2 version does a good of job blocking ads<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Chrome Web Store has long stopped approving extensions based on Manifest V2. Since late fall of 2024, new versions of Chrome first started displaying warnings<\/a> that installed Manifest V2 extensions had to be disabled, and then began to deactivate them automatically<\/a>. The user can still re-enable them, but it obviously won\u2019t last long.<\/p>\n

Microsoft Edge was caught doing the same thing<\/a> in February. If Google\u2019s current plan holds, even enterprise Chrome users will see Manifest V2 extensions shut down by June 2025, which likely will be followed by Manifest V2 support pulled entirely from Chromium.<\/p>\n

What are the developers of dozens of Chromium-based browsers going to do? Well, they\u2019ll inevitably have to kill Manifest V2 support. And without it, your favorite ad blockers and privacy enhancers will stop working.<\/p>\n

Mozilla sets its sights on the ad market, too<\/h2>\n

The non-profit Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary Mozilla Corporation have always been in an awkward position, as their main source of income was partnerships with search engines \u2014 primarily Google. The current Mozilla management mainly consists of alumni from companies like Meta and eBay, which mainly rely on advertising for their revenue. It\u2019s hardly surprising that as of late, Firefox development updates have increasingly angered fans of the browser\u2019s privacy features.<\/p>\n

Since version 128, Firefox has incorporated the Privacy-Preserving Attribution<\/a> (PPA) system, which it\u2019s testing in partnership with Facebook. And at the end of February 2025, the following notice appeared in the updated Firefox Terms of Use: \u201cWhen you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox\u201d.<\/p>\n

Users were furious<\/a>. They interpreted this clause as explicit permission to resell their data and introduce other forms of tracking. Under public pressure, Mozilla amended the language<\/a> to \u201cYou give Mozilla the rights necessary to operate Firefox\u201d. The company\u2019s argument that it had merely codified something the browser was already doing \u2014 and actually always had \u2014 left users unconvinced. After all, suspicious changes also occurred in other parts of the FAQ: for example, clauses that promised Firefox would never sell data to advertisers were removed.<\/p>\n

That said, there were no actual<\/em> changes to any of the browser\u2019s relevant functionality. So it\u2019s still safe to use Firefox for the time being. However, keep a close eye on any new features in each update. Consider disabling them or looking for an alternative to Firefox. If you want to be the first to know, subscribe to our blog<\/a>, or follow our Telegram channel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nothing changes with Apple\u2019s Safari<\/h2>\n

The vast majority of Apple users use the stock Safari browser, based on the WebKit engine. It has its own extension system \u2014 available through the App Store and utilizing Apple\u2019s special mechanisms for blocking content in the browser. While Safari might miss out on the most powerful extensions like uBlock Origin and NoScript, robust day-to-day tools for blocking ads and tracking are available both in the form of Safari\u2019s standard settings<\/a> and extensions such as Ghostery.<\/p>\n

Apple continues to emphasize privacy as its key differentiator from other platforms, so no alarming concessions to the advertising industry have been observed in Safari. Unfortunately, although you can still install this browser on Windows, it stopped updating back in 2010<\/a>, so Windows users face a tough choice in the next section\u2026<\/p>\n

The best browser for privacy protection in 2025<\/h2>\n

Starting in June, the popular browsers Chrome and Edge will become largely ineffective for privacy-minded users \u2014 no matter what extensions or settings they may have used. The same is true for most other Chromium-based browsers.<\/p>\n

As for Firefox, despite Mozilla\u2019s dubious statements, the browser still supports Manifest V2 extensions, and the developers have said they\u2019d maintain this support<\/a> for the foreseeable future. Still, if you want to stop worrying about controversial features like \u201cattribution\u201d being turned on semi-covertly, you could always migrate to a browser that uses the Firefox source code but is more focused on keeping things private. The main options here are Tor Browser<\/a>, and popular Firefox forks such as Waterfox and LibreWolf.<\/p>\n

Despite its \u201cdark-web browser\u201d image, Tor Browser is also perfectly suitable for viewing ordinary websites \u2014 although its default privacy settings are so stringent they can cause many websites to display oddly or be partially non-functional. This is easy to fix by switching the cookie and script settings to a less paranoid mode.<\/p>\n

Waterfox is a reasonable middle-of-the-road between Firefox and Tor Browser: no developer telemetry, no built-in services like Pocket, and Firefox ESRs (extended support releases) are used as the source code. The downsides include a small development team, so Waterfox lags behind Mozilla in terms of security patches (although not by much).<\/p>\n

Focused on privacy, LibreWolf is positioned as Firefox without all the extras. The browser never \u201ccalls home\u201d (it excludes all types of manufacturer reports and telemetry), and it features the popular ad blocker uBlock Origin out of the box. LibreWolf closely follows Firefox in terms of updates, and it\u2019s available on Windows, macOS, and several flavors of Linux.<\/p>\n

The Chromium-based Brave browser, which has built-in privacy tools even before you add any extensions, remains a popular option. Its developers have pledged<\/a> to keep a number of key Manifest V2 extensions on life support: AdGuard AdBlocker, NoScript, uBlock Origin, and uMatrix. However, Brave has several controversial extras, such as a built-in crypto wallet and an AI assistant named \u201cLeo\u201d.<\/p>\n

In short, there\u2019s no such thing as a perfect browser, but if you try ranking these options from the most private but least user-friendly to the easiest to use but still private, your chart should look like this: Tor Browser, LibreWolf, Waterfox, Brave, and Firefox.<\/p>\n

Any browser, except Tor and LibreWolf, will require a secure configuration and a couple of the aforementioned extensions to block trackers and scripts<\/a> for maximum privacy.<\/p>\n

In Brave and Firefox, you can also enable \u201cTell websites not to sell or share my data\u201d \u2014 a feature established under the new Global Privacy Control<\/a> initiative. Certain jurisdictions, such as the European Union, the United Kingdom, California, Colorado, and Connecticut, legally require websites to respect this flag, but this safeguard is administrative rather than technical in nature.<\/p>\n

Your easiest option, and one that significantly enhances online privacy when using any<\/em> browser, is installing a Kaspersky security solution for home users<\/a>\u00a0and activating Private Browsing<\/strong><\/a>. By default, the feature runs in detection mode only, without blocking anything: it detects, counts, and logs attempts at collecting data. If you activate blocking mode, data collection is blocked by default on all sites, with the following exceptions:<\/p>\n