Security and Privacy: what are my options?

Everybody cares about security on one level or another, be it from stopping hackers from finding sensitive information, giving advertisement companies clues as to your interests or having moral objections to the government knowing what you are up to, we all want out browsing habits to remain somewhat secure. Some of these you will have heard of, some of these maybe not. Here is a run down of some of the best choices out there:

Comodo Dragon and Ice Dragon

Both Dragon and Ice Dragon are both web browsers by the company Comodo, a security software company who has services ranging from antivirus software to firewall protection to web browsers. The two browsers are similar, however Dragon is based on Chromium while Ice Dragon is based on Firefox. The two are both very secure so the choice between the two is purely based on personal preference. Both versions of the browsers have a great User Interface, looking very similar to the browers they are based on, but without the user tracking features or other privacy compromising aspects. Dragon and Ice Dragon automatically blocks all tracking, cookies, web spies and has an indicator for the authenticity and strength of a websites SSL certificate. This allows you to know, before you give away any information, the security risks involved in giving your details.

Brave

Brave is a lightweight open source browser with advanced advertisement controls and HTTPS everywhere integration as well as blocking cookies and tracking. Brave is based on Chromium and has a large and active development community and is currently in beta testing. Brave was announced by the founder of Mozilla and creator of JavaScript, Brandon Eich.

SRWare Iron

SRWare Iron is another web browser based on the open source project Chromium, without the Unique User ID which is sent to google every time you log into chrome, allowing for more anonymous browsing. SRWare Iron has stripped out all of the features than could be unpalatable to privacy, such as Installation-ID, Suggest, Alternate error pages, Error reporting, RLZ-Tracking, Google Updater and URL-Tracker. All very good stuff, however it would be worthless if it wasn't for the clean and user friendly UI, which resembles it's parent browser closely.

TOR Browser

It is hard to discuss secure browser options without TOR Browser coming up. TOR Browser is a browser with TOR integrated, allowing for anonymous browsing, location, browser history, personal data and online instant messaging, making it hard for any person on tracking algorithm to collect data from you. To read a more detailed description of how the TOR project works you can read my article on it. The TOR browser is used by most military, police and security services around the world when they want to communicate or browse the internet without leaving governmental IP addresses behind. TOR Browser does not have to be installed on a computer, it can be installed on a USB stick or SD card, allowing you to browse anonymously wherever you go! TOR is a powerful and useful tool, however it does come with a downside: speed, or should I say lack thereof. TOR Browser has to bounce your data through several server nodes in order to hide your IP, this process slows down your internet traffic considerably.

Conclusion

My personal favourite is Comodo Ice Dragon. I like the UI and the security features that it has. That is not to say i don't like the others in this list, I recommend them all, and just because a browser is not on this list it doesn't mean it isn't secure. These are just the ones I recommend and stand behind.

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Stay safe!

Viking