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Which web browser do you trust? [Poll]

We no longer choose our web browsers based on bells and whistles. These days its all about privacy and security and we'd like to know which browser (and which vendor) you trust to be your companion on the web.
Written by
September 30, 2015
Naked Security chrome Chromium Firefox Internet Explorer Microsoft Edge opera poll Safari Tor trust Web browser

Do you trust your web browser?

It’s your gateway to the web, a guardian against the multitude of infected websites and a foothold on your computer for some of the largest, most data-hungry organisations in the world.

The major web browsers are fast, highly sophisticated pieces of software backed up by slick distribution channels and clever advertising. They’re participants in an intense and never-ending competition with each other, with rapidly evolving web standards and ever-more cunning cyber-criminals.

They represent countless hours and millions of dollars of investment but they are a commodity that’s taken for granted and given away for free.

The days of paying for web browsers (and yes kids, there were such days) are ancient history, as are the days of competing on fancy new features and the naked aggression of embrace and extend.

These days, we know what we want our web browsers to do. The last great innovation was probably tabbed browsing almost a decade and a half ago and no amount of interface shaving or marketing puffery can hide the fact that web browsers have settled down to a solid, dependable and unexciting middle age.

As price and then features dwindled as reasons to choose a web browser, they were replaced by speed and then security and privacy.

Of course most of us don’t have the skills or the time to objectively determine such things, which leaves us choosing browsers based on a belief that one will watch our back better than another (or tolerating browsers we don’t actually trust).

And that raises an interesting question; one that I’m asking you for the third time in three years – which web browser do you trust?

We know it doesn’t mean that the winner is the most secure, but that’s not what we’re asking – we want to know what you believe to be the most trustworthy.

Is it Firefox, our winner two years in a row despite its reliance on funding from data-hungry search giants and a dwindling market share?

Perhaps it’s Internet Explorer, the browser that won the original browser war and absolutely nobody’s affection, or its shiny but poorly known successor Microsoft Edge.

What about Opera, the desktop also-ran that’s rapidly turning into a mobile and tablet also-ran, or Chromium, the decommercialised Chrome that most people haven’t heard of?

Or maybe you believe that Chrome will live up to Google’s claim to do no evil, that Safari has substance to go with Apple’s style or that Tor’s paranoia is enough to overcome the people who are out to get it.

Tell us which web browser you trust the most.

Bear in mind – that’s not necessarily the browser you use, for a variety of reasons.

Which one do you trust the most?

Image of web browsers courtesy of Shutterstock.com

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52 Comments

Firefox – despite its funding I still believe it is committed to being secure and private – and where it fails putting it right quicker than the rest.

(Poll seems to be completely filtered out by add-ons – despite allowing poll-daddy!)

You can access the poll by this link
https://polldaddy.com/poll/9102110/

I use firefox with noscript , https everywhere and a few other blockers and had no problems accessing the pool :)

Kepp up the good work team sophos

I trust Mozilla to do what they think is right. But after about four years of mostly nonsense updates from them, I no longer trust them to make good decisions. So I use Pale Moon now.

I’m flabbergasted at people thinking they can trust Chrome. Google is an ADVERTISING company. What do you think their purpose is in publishing Chrome?

I completely agree. I can’t tell if they are Google zealots, shills, simply uninformed, purposely being ironic, or…what?

Google flat-out tells you that the reason they exist is to collect data on you and sell it to others. There are unable to collect absolutely all your online communication if you don’t use their products (although still more than you would think), so they created their own browser where every single site you visit is collected, recorded, and sold to third parties, not to mention their own email clients where they sift through your innermost thoughts, as well as those who didn’t enter into any agreement with Google, other than sending to an address which (perhaps not obviously) results in mail being delivered to Gmail.

I understand using Chrome if you simply don’t care about privacy, but what kind of human would go so far as to say they actually TRUST Chrome? It is mind-blowing.

Is branding such a strong concept that a candy-colored logo and a disingenuous feel-good motto are enough to satisfy consumers?

Yes, I know…sadly that is a rhetorical question.

Where’s our option to vote “other”? In my case, it’s Pale Moon.

Yes I use Pale Moon as well, so let me elaborate why I choose it over the big competitors (Firefox especially):

Pale Moon (an Open Source web browser forked off from the Firefox/Mozilla code) is more memory efficient because they don’t implement unnecessary features that are prone to vulnerabilities (Hello, Pocket, Reader+, built-in PDF reader, Google Now, Share, Telegram and other WebRTC related code). This browser also will, and does support the XPCOM, XUL and XBL (Currently Firefox is killing this off in replacement of WebExtensions API) source code that our add-on devs use to build their wonderful extensions that we all have come to love and rely on.

Even a trusted open source browser like Modzilla’s Firefox has to be secured as they too sell your browsing details to 3rd parties to make up their revenue. I add the Firefox extensions ‘Disconnect’, ‘Disconnect Search’, ‘HTTPs Everywhere’, ‘Google Disconnect’ and then change my search engine to DuckDuckGo Plus to secure access to my details in addition to a small handful of extras such as Adblock Plus

With Disconnect you have a small dashboard installed. You’ll be shocked when you see the number of number of 3rd parties your information could have potentially been passed on too. Wish they had it for Internet Explorer at work ….

I use SeaMonkey because it is not one of the major ones and also because you cannot install apps directly can only save them.

SeaMonkey has always been my favorite, and as a separate question, I trust it the most. Firefox would come out ahead on the trust because it’s a wee bit quicker on the patches, but that gets balanced out a bit by the security-through-obscurity factor for SeaMonkey.

To be honest there is none I trust anymore.

Microsoft’s browsers, Chrome and Safari have their parent company’s interests at heart.

Chromium may be an option but nothing yet seems viable.

Opera is trying to make it i the ad/marketing business.

That leaves the little guys (PaleMoon, SeaMonkey, etc)… Who knows about them?

Although Mozilla is a not-for-profit company FireFox is not. But they would seem to be one of the most trustworthy.

That only leaves Tor. (And Lynx!!)

P.S.
If you take a look at Yahoo!’s blog, they maintain the “Browser is Dead” !?!?

Firefox.

But I am a non-techie art guy so aside from staying away from IE, I can’t give any concrete tech reasons other than I have been using it for years with no problems.

I don’t trust browsers but I accept the risk as we have to use them. IE is the least secure browser as it is integrated into the operating system and a compromise of the browser is a potential compromise of the operating system. In a native install until Edge, it also had the ;argest attack surface though adding plugins to other browsers can negate this.

I would say Slimjet, a chromium browser only better. Secure, private and lots of good features. Ad Blocker, Turbocharged download manager etc.

Otter Browser!

And why? Because the big guys are sell-outs! Google is the most evil company and all the other big one’s try to emulate the Google Chrome experience in look, feel and being feature less!

Most big traitors have been Opera and Firefox, because they sold their power users to be more like Chrome!

A vote for Firefox or Opera is equal with a vote for Google Chrome!

One more addition to my comment…. The only one that never did emulate the Chrome experience was the good old IE – you can say whatever you want about it, but Microsoft never was bowing down to Google during the IE age like they do it today with Edge!

These days companies have just no honor and creativity anymore!

Disgusting times…..

Those are interesting accusations about Opera and Firefox but I am not sure that they are true.

I would say that is easy to realize. Take a Firefox version before Australis (29) and Opera before Opera next (use version 12) and compare it with recent Firefox and Opera versions.

Lost most built inside customization, Opera has now Chromium engine, Firefox perhaps has kept Gecko but changed skin to emulate Chrome as much as possible.

Point is, both browsers have been in the past feature rich, unique and special, now they are almost as limited and simplistic and design only centered like Google Chrome.

I would call that indeed sell-outs!

That’s the first time I’ve heard anyone complain that a browser isn’t feature rich *enough*.

Another vote for Pale Moon here.

If I must choose out of the options offered, I guess Tor since they do try to take out at least some of the Mozilla reporting. That’s a distant second though ;)

That said I don’t have it installed, and fall back on IE in the rare cases I need something else (which again is a distant third I think, probably not quite as secure but I trust it a lot better to not track my every move, and if they are Windows is already my OS so Microsoft isn’t getting much extra. It does need a bit of config though.)

My main criterion of trust is a browser with a stable and configurable user interface which is never changed against the users’ will.
Secondarily a browser which does not spy or track.
Tertiarily a browser which is just a browser and not also a mail agent, nntp agent or coffee machine.

Currently, I trust palemoon (which is not listed)

I checked out PaleMoon as everyone suggests and it has ads on homepage… I don’t see what’s so secure about this.

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