The Best Browser Extensions that Protect Your Privacy

There are a ton of browser extensions that promise to protect your privacy, which leads to some natural questions: Which is the best? Do they all do the same thing? What should I really download? In this guide, we’re going to look at the most popular browser extensions that promise to protect your privacy online, and give you our recommendations.

We’ve talked about why you should care about your privacy several times here, so whether you choose to do something to protect yourself is up to you—we’re not going to rehash it. Instead, we’re going to dive into the tools available to keep your data safe. Don’t worry, though. You don’t need to download a ton of apps to keep yourself safe and your data close to pocket. Here are the best in each group.

Block Ads, Scripts, and Popups with AdBlock Plus

Ad and script blockers give you control over your browsing experience. They can block ads on the sites you visit and kill third-party scripts and widgets that send your data to who knows where. However, with great power comes great responsibility: If you don’t know how to use them, these tools can break the sites you read, rendering them unusable until you figure out what to allow and what to block. Plus, blocking ads can has a very real impact on the site and the people who work on it (like us here at Lifehacker). Even so, it puts the power into your hands to decide which sites are worth supporting and which are just too annoying to use without an ad-blocker.

AdBlock Plus (Firefox/Chrome/Safari) blocks banner ads, pop-up ads, rollover ads, and more. It stops you from visiting known malware-hosting domains, and also disables third-party tracking cookies and scripts. Plus, there are a ton of things you can do with it beyond just blocking ads. We think it has the right combination of ease-of-use, on-and-off toggling, whitelisting capabilities, and hands-off management that makes it a tool that anyone can pick up and use. Power users can get their hands dirty with different subscription lists and tweaking the active lists they use, but basic users can enable it and walk away.

The Alternatives:

In our opinion, Adblock Plus is your best bet, but there are a few other extensions that do the same thing. Here are your other options:

• uBlock Origin for Chrome and Firefox: uBlock Origin, the version of uBlock managed and maintained by the original developer (you can read the whole uBlock vs. uBlock Origin controversy here if you care, but our recommendation is uBlock Origin) is just as powerful as AdBlock Plus—perhaps moreso, because it gives you more control over what’s blocked and what’s allowed than ABP does. It’s also much lighter on system resources, and it doesn’t come with some of the issues ABP has withcompanies paying the makers of ABP to let their ads through. The only reason uBlock Origin isn’t our top pick here is because it’s a little advanced for novice users, and it blocks a bit more than ABP does, so you’ll need to get your hands dirty to really customize it, and b: ABP has features—like cleaning up Facebook, hiding YouTube comments and other cruft, and more—that uBlock Origin doesn’t...at least not until you’re enough of a power user to add them yourself. If you do consider yourself a power user though, skip ABP and install this instead.
• NoScript (Firefox) and ScriptSafe (Chrome, formerly ScriptNo): Both disable all scripts from running on pages without you specifically adding them to an allow list. This includes Java, JavaScript, Flash, and others. They’re powerful, but they’re also really aggressive, and will break an awful lot of sites. If you use them, you have to be up to the task of digging through scripts on every new site you visit to figure out which ones will make the site even work properly. Plus, AdBlock Plus already does this (and is less aggressive), you just have to add the right filters.
• We should say here that if you don’t use AdBlock Plus for some of those advanced features, like trimming YouTube’s cruft or blocking specific things, you should give uBlock Origin a try. It’ll do wonders for your browser’s memory consumption, and you’ll get a more powerful and customizable tool as a result—although you may need to do some tweaking to get it to work just the way you like it.

• Additional Privacy Tools You Should Have

  In addition to privacy protecting tools and ad blockers, a few other add-ons, utilities, and services came up while we were researching this piece that you shouldn’t roam the web without.
  HTTPS Everywhere (Firefox/Chrome) is a must-have regardless of what other security tools you opt to use. Once installed, the extension will shunt your connection to SSL whenever possible, and will try to find secure versions of the sites you visit. It’s a great way to protect your browsing without really lifting a finger. Best of all, it just updated to keep you safe on thousands more sites around the web.
  
  A Virtual Private Network (VPN) encrypts all of your internet traffic and offers the most possible protection from prying eyes. We’ve covered VPN services in detailbefore, including what to look for, what makes a good one, and some great providers to try. Look for a provider that keeps only the minimum required logs for troubleshooting purposes, offers strong encryption, is well regarded by its users, and offers multiple exits locations. Contrary to common belief, don’t just spring for any offshore VPN—just because your VPN provider is in a far-off country doesn’t mean it’s secure, or at all private. For more suggestions, our friends at TorrentFreak just updated their list of providers that take your anonymity seriously, and it looks a bit like ours. If you’re just looking for a free or freemium service to keep you protected while you’re out and about, and you’re not ready to try on a full, paid, VPN service yet (or roll your own), try Hideman or Tunnelbear.
  Antivirus and Antimalware utilities are essential to protecting security. It may sound like “How to Internet: 101,” but taking care to avoid suspicious sites, practice good internet hygiene (eg, not opening suspicious attachments, checking file names before you download, etc), and keep updated antivirus and antimalware tools on your PC is important. Often the term “privacy” is couched in terms of advertising and marketing, but the risk of identity theft and getting infected with ransomware is growing.