We’ve already covered private browsers that help cut down on advertiser tracking and keep your data safe. Secure browsers are a step further than that: locked down and designed to actively combat all tracking.
However, it’s not all good news. Secure browsers can be so restrictive that they make normal tasks harder. Finding a balance of security and usability is key when looking for a secure browser.
What secure browsers block
Secure browsers mostly share a common set of features with private browsers, but with more aggressive blocking settings.
Trackers are a type of web technology that saves browsing data to follow your usage from one website to the next. Private and secure browsers alike block known advertising and tracking domains with maintained lists much like ad blockers.
Cookie isolation is a method secure browsers can use to help limit website trackers, and particularly social media trackers. Each website gets its own isolated storage for cookies, meaning trackers can’t read your cookies from other websites.
Fingerprint resistance aims to defeat “fingerprinting”, which is a method websites use to identify your machine. Websites can read your screen resolution, installed fonts, hardware behaviour, and other signals to build a unique identifier even with cookies and trackers blocked. Fingerprint resistant browsers fake these or reduce them.
Script blocking is the biggest tool secure browsers use, and it’s often the most aggressive. Secure browsers often disable JavaScript on some or all websites, which can cause interactive features to break.
What they break
Secure browsers block these features to prevent the possibility of websites tracking your browsing habits, but many websites rely on cookies, trackers, and scripts to function.
Checkout pages, secure bank logins, and third-party API access often require a cookie to function correctly, and blocking or tampering with the functionality means the expected behaviour can fail.
Likewise, inbuilt bot detection systems on search engines like Google or CDN servers like Cloudflare can falsely trigger on secure browsers because the traffic does not look like a regular browser.
Blocker strictness
Browsers like Firefox don’t block everything by default, but their strictness can be increased. Others like Mullvad come configured to block everything out of the box.
Some browsers offer clever blocking workarounds to allow logins and carts to work correctly while disabling the tracking you don’t want. Firefox’s Total Cookie Protection allows functional cookies through without reopening the door to advertising trackers.
Two browsers might be the answer
If you’re looking for a general purpose browser, a strict one is likely to interfere with your regular tasks sooner or later. That’s why many privacy-focused users run two browsers: one set for a high level of strictness like Tor or Mullvad for anonymous browsing, and Firefox (or a fork of it) for anything that needs a login or persistent data.
That approach makes it easy to get most of the privacy most of the time without giving up the functionality you need for tasks like shopping or banking.
Do you really need a secure browser?
For most people, a browser like Firefox already blocks the overwhelming majority of cross-site tracking without significant functionality trade-offs, and it can even be tuned and customised to maximise blocking but minimise websites breaking.
More aggressive security earns its place when you don’t want to be tracked by advertisers, social networks, and other entities. It can be helpful for situations when you don’t want to be profiled, such as sensitive research, whistleblowing, or reporting.
Many people may not need the features a locked-down browser offers, but they are important to know about so that you can make an informed and intentional decision rather than just sticking to what you’re familiar with.
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