Day Two: Better Browsing

According to statcounter.com, Google's Chrome browser currently enjoys over 68% marketshare, with Apple's Safari not even a close second at 17%, and Microsoft's Edge at 4%.

Let's see if we can shift these statistics, shall we?

Surely with all the opt out work there is to do, browsing is a minor case. But arguably there is actually no better place to start when it comes to opting out.  After all, browsers are a major source of information about us, leakage to advertising and tech companies alike (the line between them, arguably, is very blurry).

In Day Two of the Cybercleanse you'll learn more about why and how browser choices matter; how to try out multiple systems and switch easily between them; and get your first taste of how many options there truly are out there.

Does my browser matter?

Browsers have been hotly contested features of the Internet since the early days of the World Wide Web. Soon after Tim Berners Lee and the crew at CERN began posting pages of text with links to jump between them on an accessible network, a small company called Mozilla began to distribute their browser, Netscape. At the time, a browser like Netscape could load a website: a static collection of text and some images, along with a very basic kind of code on the page ("markup language") that marked up where the links took you and where the images were placed.

But then Microsoft began bundling their own browser, Explorer, with their popular Windows operating system. Soon this existing tech giant, a maker of the world's most used operating system, dominated the web and Netscape fell by the wayside. Several decades and antitrust lawsuits later, the lesson of the early web is incontrovertible: controlling how people access the Web is at least half the battle.

It's much more than that today. Today's browser wars aren't just about how you access the web. Browsers provide an intimate view into your online habits. They keep records of the pages you visit, the credit card numbers and passwords you input. They also know what operating system and sometimes what kind of computer you're on, and any plugins or extensions you've installed.This latter information they share with today's websites, which have long since grown beyond static text pages.

That's because today's websites include some stuff you can see--images, text, clickable links, likable videos-- and a ton of stuff you can't. Websites store cookies in your browser to recognize you next time you visit; embed beacons and trackers that follow you around the web and report back on where you went and what you liked. They can "fingerprint" your browser by identifying its unique combination of cookies, screen resolution, logins, extensions, and more. No matter where you go, the browser you use to go online is giving you away.

Things get especially insidious when companies that run ad tracking and AI technologies issue their own browsers. When you log in to their system, they truly can and do know and track everything about you. They also use what you do online to train their machine learning algorithms which they market as AI technologies.

The best example of this is Chrome, which was initially developed as an open source project called Chromium before Google released the version you're probably familiar with today. Because Chrome attaches your Google user login with everything you do online, it feeds your information and data traces all over the web to Google. Google can then use this information to sell your eyeballs to advertisers and develop their AI systems. If they are subpoenaed in a court of law they can give away your entire history --not just your searches and emails, but everywhere you've visited and everything you've done. It's a privacy nightmare.

Worse yet, these browsers always hand-wave away the problem by providing some kind of setting or tab called "Privacy." This is window-dressing. It makes you feel like you have some control, when really you have ceded all your control to Google. Or Microsoft. Or whomever, and most of the time they don't have your best interests at heart.

Today's plan

With this in mind, here is what we are going to do today.

First, if you use Chrome, Edge, or Safari, you are going to follow these instructions to replace it as your primary browser with a privacy-centric alternative.

In other words, you will transfer all your user data over to another browser. I'm going to use Firefox as an example for this first, simple transfer, but really any other browser can also accommodate a switch like this. I will give you a few other options as well.

It is incredibly easy it is to do this. It takes only a few minutes. In fact, you will wonder why you didn't do it before. It is the easiest, lowest hanging fruit of your opt out choices.

(If you already don't use Edge, Chrome, or Safari, bravo! You can skip to step two  or install a new browser of your choice listed in step three).

Second, regardless of what browser you have, you will switch over your primary, default search engine to an alternative that doesn't track or trace. Since your mileage may vary ("YMMV," on the internet) on this one I'll give you some examples to try out. Try as many of them as you like!

Third, regardless of your choice of browsers, I'm going to ask you to install 2-3 other browsers on your machine too.  You don't have to migrate your data, but you do need to install them.

Why? First, you will experience the ease of installing and using a different system. You will see what it's like to search afresh, without Google sniffing all your preferences and feeding you page after page of ranked garbage. It's a whole new internet out there, folks.

I also want you to get used to this because even though I recommended Firefox above for this exercise, I never want you to feel locked in. Mozilla is privacy conscious now, but it may get acquired, change course, get a new CEO, or go under! These things happen all the time in tech. When or if the writing is on the wall, you will feel fancy-free enough to jump ship.

Second, I want you to have multiple browsers on hand for different kinds of activities online. This is useful because some websites just don't work without one or another system (although most sites are compatible with the top five). But it's also helpful to stop the platforms from sniffing out what you do on other people's websites.  Once you've logged into Facebook, for instance, Facebook tracks and traces the other places you visit in that browser while your login is still active.

We want to shut that kind of activity down. One way to do it is to spread your traces across multiple browsers; another is to lock a service into one specific browser so it can't see anything else on your machine.

Now, some browsers (like Mozilla's Firefox) offer "containers" that keep Google and Facebook locked to a single tab.  That can work pretty well. But personally, if I need to use one of the big tech systems for any extended period of time, one that I know is sniffing me out to see what I am doing elsewhere, I will download and dedicate an entirely distinct browser for it. It keeps that part of my digital life organized and fully separated from the others.

By the end of this session you will be accessing this page (and others) from a system that knows absolutely nothing about you. And hopefully, we can keep it that way!

Step 1: Migrating from Chrome, Edge or Safari to Firefox

Follow these steps if you have Chrome, Edge, or Safari already installed and use it as your primary browser. 

To migrate browsers you probably want to retrieve or transfer some information from your current system: namely, bookmarked links, passwords and logins, and extensions. But guess what? Most of these new browsers will import that data for you automagically! These instructions are all over the web so I'm not going to rehash them here: you can trust these instructions I've linked here from Mozilla.

First, download and install the most recent version of Firefox: for Windows and for Mac. (And if you're on a Chromebook, follow along for now, and later I'll teach you how to install a super easy, light, and fun version of Linux on it so you can kiss Google goodbye. You'll find it easy to return to rerun these instructions later).

Then:

• To leave Chrome for Firefox, follow these instructions.
• To leave Edge for Firefox, follow these instructions.
• To leave Safari for Firefox, follow these instructions.

Now try opening your new browser (select Firefox from your launcher) and see what it's like. Can you see your bookmarks? Did your materials transfer? Hopefully the answer is yes (99% of the time it will be!). And if you notice any problem, it's likely someone else has had the same issue. So search for your issue on the forum -- which is an online place where other people help you out! (no need to call your nephew or tech support)

Make sure you change your "default" browser to Firefox: here's how. This way when you click something, it will open in Firefox.

And that's it! See how easy that was? And every other browser can do that too, so even if you don't end up settling with Firefox, congratulations: you now know how to migrate. 

Take some last steps to make it official!

Install the Google and Facebook containers for Firefox.

Follow these steps to tell Firefox not to let websites track you.  (Note: there is a lot of commotion right now about this very issue. Firefox used to have a feature called Do Not Track, that stopped sites from tracking. They just removed that feature and replaced it with this other global privacy feature. Their rationale: websites were either ignoring the Do Not Track instructions or, worse, they were using its presence to help fingerprint your browser, undermining the whole point. Still, some users are angry and moving to another system. If this bothers you, try an alternative below.  We are going to try a whole lot of alternatives anyway!)

If you have favorite Chrome extensions, you can probably find equivalents for Firefox here.

Don't forget to download Firefox for iOS or for Android, depending on your phone.

You can also sign up for a Mozilla account, which will let you sync your bookmarks and everything across mulitple computers and your phone. That way you always have your information with you. Like a Google account, but without all the tracking, ads, and AI.

Step 2: Changing your Search Engine

Even if you download Firefox (or another browser), once you log in to Google or Facebook and start searching, big tech is still tracking you (okay, not as bad as if you're on Chrome, but still not great).

Solution: make a different search engine your default!

Firefox offers DuckDuckGo as a built-in alternative to search directly from the address bar. So for now, open Firefox, navigate to the Preferences menu, and under Search select DuckDuckGo instead of Google as your default search engine.

Duckduckgo is great and really versatile, but I don't believe in putting my eggs in one basket (even if they're duck eggs!). So here are some others you should try. You can't set these as default within Firefox but you can always set these as your homepage from that same Preferences menu, making search straightforward.

• Startpage: Essentially runs a Google search for you, but obscured so Google doesn't attach the search to you or to any username or existing ID (note that DuckDuckGo can do this for videos, maps and photos by using the "bang" feature).
• Qwant: A French statup focused on privacy.  Built assuming that the GDPR (general data privacy regulations in Europe) is standard, and goes beyond. offers an extension for Firefox so you can search directly from the address bar.
• Disconnect.me is highly privacy focused and has a bunch of great products, including search.
• Ecosia uses ad-based revenue to invest in environmental projects. It's basically a front-end for Bing search.
• There are some AI-powered search engines, like Perplexity (but see here for why I'm not a fan of AI search).
• Brave search is now fully independent of Google or Microsoft (although I outline some issues with Brave below).

I often search on multiple engines just to spread my traces around and get a different perspecive on the web with each one.

Step 3. Download 1-2 more browsers and give them a whirl.

A big part of my Big-Tech-busting philosophy is that not all eggs go in the same basket. Platforms got big and powerful by enticing us to use them for more than one thing, or allowing them to track us throughout the rest of our lives. Break that party up, I say!

The final step, then, is to explore some other options. Firefox is great and really useful, and it's not built by a corporation: Mozilla is also a foundation. But it's not the only one out there. And they may go sour or go south, you never know.

Some of these companies I like because they are trying innovative things in the privacy and browser market.  Others I have on hand just because: hey, you always need something Chrome-compatible for those websites out there that just break otherwise. You may even find you want to make one of these your primary system -- if so, great! go for it!

And all of them come with mobile versions too, that you can install on Android or iOS.  So choose 1-2 newbies, download, and play around!

• DuckDuckGo. Yes, they have their own browser. I love this little "flame" feature in the top right corner -- when you click it, it automatically flushes your cache. Fun and brilliant! Note that sometimes it just forgets your tabs that are open but don't worry, it's not a bug, it's a feature to help you stay private and make your traces ephemeral.
• Opera and Vivaldi are built on the Chromium open source codebase but which take a different approach than Google to tracking and privacy. Both are innovative and offer unique user experiences. They're fun to try and offer extensions and other nifty benefits.
• Brave, also built on Chromium, has taken a stance against fingerprinting, and it is indeed easy to use and install. Note that its CEO is actively opposed to the right for same-sex couples to marry, and is also a Covid denialist. This may or may not align with your politics, but at least there are plenty of other fish in the sea.
• Chromium is the plain vanilla open source version of Chrome. This is not as user-friendly to install or keep up to date, but it's an option.
• Tor. This is the ultimate privacy browser, built with State Department support to help pro-democracy activists coordinate around the world (although people also use it to buy things on the Dark Web, whatcha gonna do...). It works by setting up multiple relay nodes and bouncing your signal around the world so that websites don't know who you are or where you're browsing from. Load it up and surf to amazon.com for an example and it will display in a local language that you may or may not recognize! Tor is slow, like the dialup net days, but that's because it's super private. It's based on Firefox. Good to have on hand in a pinch.

Note that since Opera, Vivaldi, Brave and Chromium are all basically de-Googled Chrome under the hood, they are useful for moments when you run into websites that only work on Chrome. DuckDuckGo and Tor are based on the Firefox codebase: some other great ones that reject Chromium and embrace privacy first are listed here.

Woohoo! You did it!

Well, that wasn't so hard, was it? After 10-30 minutes of downloading and messing around with settings you should have at least two, perhaps three or more new browsers on your system.

Over the coming days, play around with these browsers and see what you love -- and what you don't love. If there's a different one you want to make your next home: great! Until then, or for now at least, even the most basic Firefox install will keep you protected, and offer you truer settings to toggle to get more privacy online.

In a week or so, once you've settled down into this new cadence, you will kiss Chrome, Edge, or Safari goodbye by blowing away your settings. They are useful to have around, again just in case, but they don't need to be your face to the web and they don't need to be bogged down by all your user data, which they can still transmit to their respective motherships.

In the meanwhile, you get to experience what it's like to have options and the freedom to choose among them. And this is at the core of opting out. Stretching your own legs, or your internet wings, and choosing your path. You're in charge, not the tech giants.