I mentioned this in my blog post Cybersecurity Best Practices but I thought it worth pointing out separately because of Google’s contempt for user privacy. That’s their business model—Google is not a search company, they are an advertising company. Like Facebook, they want every shred of our personal information they can get so they can target ads at us.
If you use Google’s Chrome browser, I suggest you try the Brave browser instead. Brave is exactly the same as Chrome—they both use the same codebase, called Chromium—except Brave does not contain Google’s advertising and tracking code.
I removed Chrome a couple of years ago and have been using Brave in its place. A few benefits to Brave over Chrome:
- Brave blocks 3rd-party tracking by default — which I think should be a big deal to everyone
- Brave uses less of your Mac’s memory which improves performance
- Brave automatically encrypts your website connection when possible
- Brave now supports all Chrome extensions, including popular password managers like LastPass and 1Password
- If you have bookmarks in Chrome that you want to keep, Brave will import them to make the transition easy
I also like the Firefox browser and I sometimes use Apple’s built-in Safari browser as well. Read more about Brave’s features at brave.com/features.