In an online world of increasing lack of privacy and constant tracking of each user’s web activities, many people might be wondering if and how they can make it so that their privacy remains intact when they browse the World Wide Web. A number of options have been made available throughout the past years such as ad-blockers, incognito browser modes, the “Do not track” plug-ins and built in headers, etc. However, in order to make certain that your web privacy is as intact as possible, you’d have to implement all of the aforementioned methods and they might still not be enough to ensure that you aren’t getting tracked. This is where Epic Privacy Browser comes into play – the name should be enough for you to deduce what its purpose is and in the next lines, you will learn more about how it works so as to determine whether it is a desirable browsing option for you.
Introduction
Epic Privacy Browser is a web-browser developed with the sole purpose of providing its users with the ability to safely browse the Internet without having their privacy invaded. As you surely already know, currently there is a huge number of ways in which most users’ privacy gets violated on a daily basis and unfortunately, most of the time this is actually legal. One cannot simply state that they don’t want to have their online activities traced and expect that their desire would be fulfilled. Therefore, another approach is needed in order to make one’s browsing more private. This is where Epic can be helpful with its many different features that have the sole purpose of making sure that what you do on the Internet does not become public and known by anyone except for you. You cannot expect from Epic to have the speed of Microsoft Edge, the versatility of Chrome or the customization capabilities of Opera, what you can expect from this browser is high levels of online privacy as this is the whole idea behind this program.
Interface
There isn’t really much to say about Epic’s interface. It is a browser based on Chromium so if you are familiar with Google Chrome, you should have no problem using it. Initially it looks and feels the same as Chrome and only once you’ve actually started exploring the web with it, will you notice some of the more important differences.
Performance
Epic isn’t the fastest browser out there, especially if you are using its proxy servers but then again – it is not supposed to be. Privacy demands sacrifice and in this case, speed and performance would have to suffer a bit. That said, the browser is perfectly workable and if you aren’t annoyed by pages that do not load super quickly, then you should have no issue with Epic’s performance. Also, the built-in ad-blocker might actually help load certain pages faster than they would load with a browser that doesn’t block ads.
Constant incognito mode
If you have ever used some form of incognito mode on any other browser, then you should be familiar with this feature. However, with Epic, it has been taken to a whole other level as you are basically surfing in incognito/private mode by default – no history is being kept or anything else that would suggest what your previous browsing session has been about. As you will see when you open the main menu of the browser, there isn’t even a History button.
Features
Any extra features that Epic has have been focused on making your web activities as private as possible. This browser combines all the popular privacy-protecting methods that you might have heard of as well as adding a few extra ones for additional protection.
- Built-in ad-blocker – A lot of modern browsers have integrated this feature and for a good reason. Ads are oftentimes way too annoying and intrusive for anyone to put up with them and they could also sometimes trigger security risks as well. The feature works well and is enabled by default so if you wish to stop it, you’d have to do that manually.
- Proxy – This is likely one of the most important features that allow for better protected web privacy. On a regular browser, when a request to a website is made, the user’s IP gets sent to that site so that the site’s server would know where to send back a reply. Though this is the norm, having your IP send to a certain website can allow for your physical location to get approximately determined. With a proxy feature, the request and the reply get rerouted through another server that serves as a middle link for the web traffic. That way, if a website attempts to track you, the address that it would determine would be the address of the proxy server and not your own. In order to enable the proxy when using Epic, all you have to do is click on e the proxy button from the toolbar (top-left) and select On. You can also choose which of the proxy servers to use as there are a couple of them.
- Do not track – A lot of browsers have this feature but the difference between them and Epic is that when the Do not track header is enabled on Firefox or IE for example, the sites you visit can still decide to ignore it. This isn’t the case with Epic. Here, the Do not track is enabled by default and it actively prevents sites from keeping tabs on your web activities. Once you visit a site that is trying to track you, the browser will even display a small window showing you how many trackers have been blocked and giving you the option to turn of the tracking protection if you so desire.
- Secure search – most search engines are also know for telemetry and data collection which is why Epic has a separate search tool that is powered by the most popular search engines but does not send any search data to them. It also does not keep any search history which is why you won’t see any search suggestions from previous search queries. Also, any queries made in Epic’s search tool are automatically rerouted through the proxy by default.
Issues
Epic has some compatibility issues with certain websites as it might not be able to properly load some of them. Also, for privacy’s sake, there are very few extensions for this browser (less than 10!) but note that this is done for the sake of protecting your privacy as there are many extensions out there that are known for tracking their users and collecting personal data. Another thing more advanced users might be displeased with is the fact that the search tool does not support basic standard search modifiers and also doesn’t work smoothly in certain instances.
Conclusion
Epic Privacy browser is exactly what its title says it is – web privacy at its finest. If you are concerned about getting traced when surfing the web and about having your personal data collected by all sorts of sites and online services, then you should probably give this browser a go. It isn’t the fastest, has certain bugs and glitches and lacks the customization and versatility of the more popular browsers but, as we already stated, its purpose is different and it is surely good at what it is made to do – keep your online privacy protected and secured.
