Epic Privacy Browser Review | PCMag

There are loads of distinct approaches you can make certain protection and privacy in your Website browser. You can delete your history right after each individual use, for case in point, or use your browser’s historical past-absolutely free private browsing method. You can add a Do Not Observe plug-in, or disguise your IP handle by likely through a proxy. Or… you can simply just download the cost-free Epic Privateness Browser and get all the privateness options conceivable, all of them lively by default.

Built on the Chromium platform, Epic Privacy Browser won’t allow for plug-ins, retains no background, and blocks 3rd-celebration cookies. With a single click on, you can redirect your World-wide-web surfing through Epic’s possess built-in proxy, thereby hiding your IP handle. Epic generally broadcasts the business common “Do Not Track” information, but also actively functions to detect and block advertisement networks, social networks, and Internet analytics techniques that keep track of your browsing exercise. Throughout the board, it’s intended for privacy.

Obtaining Began
If you happen to be common with Chrome, you currently know how to use Epic. Down load it, set up it, and start out browsing. Its default dwelling web site, the identical page that it shows for a new tab, includes 8 panels for your preferred sites. Two of them are presently populated, 1 with a “how it will work” web site and a person linking to Epic’s private look for much more about search afterwards.

Chrome’s new tab web page instantly populates its panels with your most-employed web sites. Epic doesn’t retain any historical past, so it can’t know which sites you use most. You will will need to simply click every panel and manually enter no matter what URL you want.

The property page also displays the quantity of 3rd-bash cookies blocked, as very well as the variety of trackers blocked. Of study course, these statistics go over the existing session only, given that (I am going to say it once more) Epic won’t keep any background.

Prompt Proxy
Each Web webpage request sends your IP tackle to a server devoid of the IP deal with the server wouldn’t know exactly where to ship its reply. Dependent on your IP deal with, a internet site can approximately decide your actual physical site. For example, Google utilizes this potential to serve up localized effects, and to show working with the language correct to your spot.

If you’d somewhat not give away your locale, Epic delivers a created-in proxy. Just click on the icon at the finish of the Deal with Bar to router your site visitors by way of Epic’s secure proxy. Any site that tries to locate you dependent on your IP tackle will feel you are in New Jersey, in which the proxy server resides

Secure Search
Epic’s have look for webpage claims it can be “driven by the world’s leading look for engines,” but it would not give away information and facts to individuals engines. It doesn’t test to guess what you are typing, and it does not ship referrer information to sites that you link to from its look for outcomes. Your queries get routed by way of Epic’s proxy server routinely.

Epic also immediately routes queries to major look for engines through the proxy. This prevents the look for services from linking your look for phrases to your IP tackle.

Do Not Monitor

Do Not Keep track of
Internet sites observe your browsing habits for a number of unique causes. Products and services that purchase promotion area on several websites monitor which ads you have witnessed. Analytics providers help web-sites evaluate matters like the amount of special web site website visitors and the range of views just about every website page gets. Social media buttons allow you effortlessly share a site, but also track your web site visits.

Mozilla introduced the Do Not Monitor header for Firefox in 2011 Online Explorer, Opera, and other folks shortly followed suit. The problem is that compliance is strictly voluntary advert providers are absolutely free to ignore the header. That’s why Epic actively blocks a large selection of monitoring solutions. When you go to a web site that includes one or additional trackers, it pops up a modest, transient window within the browser reporting how many it blocked.

The Do Not Track functionality equipped with AVG AntiVirus Absolutely free 2014 and Avira Totally free AntiVirus (2014) is much more adaptable than Epic’s. With AVG and Avira, you can pick whether or not or not to block precise trackers, for instance leaving social media and analytics unblocked even though blocking ad trackers. Epic’s Do Not Monitor is an all-or-absolutely nothing proposition.

On the other hand, Epic totally blocks adverts, which signifies some webpages will load quicker. Of system, if every person blocked ads then some internet websites would fold for absence of advert revenues.

Glitches and Limits
The actuality that Epic won’t let increase-ons indicates that most password manager utilities will never function. Some password professionals, which includes RoboForm Everywhere 7($16.68 at RoboForm) and Editors’ Option LastPass 3., assist bookmarklets for conditions when you cannot put in a plug-in. A bookmarklet is a tiny Javascript application which is solely contained in a browser bookmark.

Sadly, these bookmarklets rely on cookies and on access to the referrer subject, each of which are blocked by Epic. Alok Bhardwaj, the firm’s CEO and founder, explained to me that Epic will shortly aid a tiny established of plug-ins which include preferred password managers, and that the designers are performing on a alternative for the bookmarklet problem.

In testing, I discovered that some web-sites just failed to function with Epic, or labored unusually. For case in point, when I tried to pay a visit to my favored crossword-puzzle internet site by using Epic’s proxy, it instantly demanded a username and password. A toolbar button opens a menu that allows you disable specific privacy capabilities, but the only way I could get back obtain to the crossword web-site was to stop utilizing the proxy.

The look for web site does attract on important engines, but doesn’t aid some standard lookup modifiers. For case in point, when I included “intitle:evaluation” to a lookup, it questioned if I perhaps supposed “entitled:overview.” Stranger however, when I entered new research phrases immediately after specified searches, it did nothing at all. I had to go back to the most important look for site to begin a new lookup.

Truly worth a Check out
If you routinely use InPrivate browsing in World-wide-web Explorer, Incognito in Chrome, or Non-public searching in Firefox, take into consideration supplying Epic Privacy Browser a test. With Epic, privacy is just not an selection it is really the default. Of course, there are a several glitches this is absolutely a function in development. But Epic Privateness Browser will unquestionably shield your on-line privacy.