Big Surprise: Chrome Tracks Your Data More Than Any Other Mobile Browser

I’ve covered Surfshark before in my digital privacy and security reporting, from a recent sale on its VPN service to a free, public DNS service. Now they’re here to tell us the bad news that our most popular browsers are all spying on us, and it’s worse than you probably thought.

Safari and Chrome account for 90% of the browsers’ market share worldwide, and according to a report released on May 6 by Surfshark, Chrome gobbles up more data on its users than any of the other 10 major browsers they looked into, by far.

reporting from a reputable name in the biz

The report paints a grim picture of an app that many, many people use. Nobody was ever fooling themselves into thinking that Google wasn’t slurping up their data through Chrome, but the extent of it is shocking to read.

“Chrome is the only browser that collects financial information, such as payment methods, card numbers, or bank account details,” writes Surfshark. “It is also the only browser that collects a list of contacts from the user’s phone, address book, or social graph.”

That’s in addition to the information on the user’s contact info, browsing history, financial details, user contact, search history, location, usage data, diagnostics, and other personally identifying information forms a unique fingerprint that can be used to track the user’s activity as they move around the internet.

There are other, more moderately popular browsers, though, that function just as well and don’t invasively eat up so much personal data, such as Mozilla Firefox and DuckDuckGo.

“Browsers such as DuckDuckGo and Firefox fall into a moderate category in terms of data collection, avoiding the most sensitive data collection practices. They gather information in areas like contact information (name, email address), identifiers (user ID), usage data, and diagnostics, offering a balance between functionality and privacy,” reads the report. “These browsers may suit users with moderate privacy concerns but still require robust browsing capabilities.”

Certain browsers, such as Mullvad Browser and Brave, are so locked down and secure that certain webpages break and fail to load correctly—or all at all.

I’ve used DuckDuckGo and Firefox extensively, and I can vouch that they’re reputable, trustworthy browsers that prevent tracking and data leaks more than Chrome and Safari (which I’ve also used extensively), but they aren’t so locked down that they break many, if any, webpages. They can be used as a do-everything browser throughout the day.

Even if you don’t kid yourself into thinking you’re Jason Bourne and handle top secret information throughout the day, you have to admit that it’s beyond creepy that a browser is making a list of your friends’ and families’ contact information by sucking it out of your phone, right? Just the peace of mind alone is worth switching to another browser.