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For most people, the best browser is the current, supported browser that works with required websites, receives security updates, and fits the way they manage accounts. There is no permanent winner.

Choose by the job

Start with four questions:

1. Does it work with the banking, healthcare, school, or business sites you use?
2. Is it still receiving updates on your operating system?
3. Do you want bookmarks and passwords synchronized across devices?
4. Are you comfortable with the account and data settings required for that synchronization?

Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari all change frequently. A comparison that declares one fastest or most private becomes stale quickly. Keep at least one supported fallback browser for the occasional compatibility problem, but avoid filling the computer with browsers you never update.

Let the browser install its current stable updates. If an older operating system can no longer run a supported version, changing browser settings is not a durable fix; the operating system or computer may need a larger decision.

Extensions deserve scrutiny

An extension can read or change more browser data than people expect. Remove extensions you no longer use, review permissions, and install from the browser’s official store. A familiar-looking extension name is not proof that it is trustworthy.

When the browser is not the real problem

If every browser is slow, the underlying issue may be limited memory, storage trouble, unwanted software, a weak connection, or an overloaded computer. If only one site fails, test it in a private window and a second current browser before resetting everything.

If the problem follows one work account or one business website, record the error, time, browser, and steps that trigger it. That evidence helps distinguish an account, site, extension, network, or computer problem.

Need help separating a website problem from a computer problem? Start with Home Computer Help or read The Computer Isn’t Always the Problem.

Reviewed September 8, 2026. Recheck browser support and privacy settings at least annually.

Information leaks happen all of the time.  Consider the Equifax data breach in September 2017 that exposed 148 million Americans;  That is half of the US population, which means it’s likely that those who weren’t exposed were children who have no credit history at all — to a service you’ve never even consented to.

Aside from this major financial digital leak, there are considerable leaks that happen all the time that go mostly unsung to the average person, with some of them never even being reported at all.

Many of these originate from social media platforms and the data we willingly enter into them, expecting some level of security.

However, you should expect no absolute security nor privacy for anything put on the internet, or any sort of “cloud” (which is just a flowery name for the computer of somebody else).

The latest, massive breach has targeted the largest behemoth of them all, Facebook:

The data was collected through an app called thisisyourdigitallife, built by academic Aleksandr Kogan, separately from his work at Cambridge University. Through his company Global Science Research (GSR), in collaboration with Cambridge Analytica, hundreds of thousands of users were paid to take a personality test and agreed to have their data collected for academic use.

However, the app also collected the information of the test-takers’ Facebook friends, leading to the accumulation of a data pool tens of millions-strong. Facebook’s “platform policy” allowed only collection of friends data to improve user experience in the app and barred it being sold on or used for advertising.

In short, this means you should refrain from taking tests which ask, “What celebrity do I think like?” or “What color slime would my spirit be?”  Buzzfeed is a particularly nefarious offender.

My recommendation is to never sign into anything except Facebook with your Facebook credentials, and to use ad blockers (like uBlock Origin) and cookie destroyers (Cookie AutoDelete or Self-Destructing Cookies) to cut down on the ability to be tracked online.

If you’re curious to know where your data may have been compromised elsewhere, you can check out “have i been pwned?“ and enter your e-mail address to see which services your information has been leaked from.

None of these, short of ridding yourself of Facebook and social media accounts entirely is going to prevent these things from happening, but you can mitigate the severity of your online footprint by taking proactive measures to lock your computer down.