UR Browser Blog

Privacy and security with UR Browser

Tag: VPN client

Private Browsing Modes on Various Platforms

Let’s see how technologically savvy you can be! Are you aware that there are different web browsers? Do you know the differences among these web browsers? Have you ever heard of public web browsers and private browsers? Which web browsers do you usually use? Chrome? Safari? Internet Explorer? Microsoft Edge? Opera browser? Opening a public web browser is easy, but how confident will you be in knowing how to operate or launch a private web browser? Do you know exactly what’s private browsing mode? Where is private browser on iPad? How to use privatebrowsingon different platforms like in Safari, Firefox, on iPhone, etc.? Well, it does not really matter if you do not have all the answers on the above questions. Through this article, you will be able to understand:

  1. What does private browser mode mean?
  2. Various private browsers platforms
  3. Different methods to launch private browsers
  4. Benefits of private browsing

So, let’s get started!

What Does Private Browser Mode Mean?

Private browser mode is an additional feature provided by some web browsers to allow users to conduct their online surfing sessions on the Internet. Private browsing mode, also known as privacy mode, has a different naming convention as “Incognito mode” by certain web browsers as well.

Various Private Browsers Platforms

  1. Internet Explorer

Many of us prefer to use one web browser, as it is already pre-installed, and we are used to surfing the Internet with it. This is none other than the Internet Explorer, especially when the computer operating system is under Windows. At this point in time, the latest version for the Windows operating system is Windows 10. Hence, the burning question is how should we do private browsing on Windows 10 via the Internet Explorer? If you are using Internet Explorer 11 to proceed with your private browsing, you can select the InPrivate Browsing to start, or just press “Ctrl”, “Shift” and “P” keys on the keyboard at the same time, this works as a shortcut.  

  • MacBook / Safari

A handful of us may not be using the Windows operating system for computers, as we may be using MacBook instead. So, is a private browser available on MacBook? Well, the web browser being implemented in MacBook is Safari. So, people who are MacBook users, can turn on their private browsing in Safari by selecting and opening a new private browser or just press “Shift”, “Command” and “N” at the same time as the keyboard shortcuts.

  • Google Chrome / Firefox / Microsoft Edge

So, what happens if we use other web browsers, other than Internet Explorer and Safari? How should we launch our private browsers? For instance, users can select to launch “Incognito Window” on Google Chrome to start their private browsing process. Firefox web browser is a private browser by default, so users will only need to launch the normal web browser. Microsoft Edge is like Internet Explorer. Hence, private browsers can be launched in the same method as what users can do in Internet Explorer platform.

  • Uncommon Private Browsers

However, several people will find themselves using uncommon private browsers like Tor, Brave, UR Browser, and many more. These browsers are specially made for private browsing and are usually recommended as the best private browsers of the year most of the time. Such browsers are strongly encouraged to be used by many users, as they allow many protective features to have their users feel safe from the potential risks that are lingering around in the cyber world.

  1. Tor Private Browser

Tor is one of the many private browsers for users to utilize, other than the common web browsers. It has privacy protection features established for users to make sure that their data and identity is not stolen. However, despite such good privacy protection measures, Tor does not have the capability to cater to their users for faster downloading speed. Hence, users who prefer online streaming, will not prefer using Tor for their private browsing activities.

  • Brave Private Browser

Apart from Tor private browser, Brave is the other preferred private browser by many users, as it caters both fast downloading speed and good privacy protection features for users. However, it may not seem ideal for a handful of their users, as they do not provide Virtual Private Network (VPN) to better secure the network connection for data transferring from one terminal to another.

  • UR Browser

Unlike Tor and Brave, UR Browser is being voted as the most secure private browser that provides users to have its data privacy and security protected. It is the only private browser that permits its users to run their online surfing sessions in the most discreet mode, also known as their Ninja mode that can be combined with it’s real VPN service. Users can just launch the Ninja mode with a new tab in the same window full of opened normal mode public web browsers. Even so, they can be rest assured that only the tracks and history browsed in the Ninja mode tab will not be stored permanently or temporarily in their computers. All these data leaving tracks and history will be automatically deleted once the Ninja mode tab browser is fully closed.

Additionally, UR Browser gathers alternative search engines which they choose very selectively for their partnerships. These alternative search engines have the best compatibilities with UR Browser, which is built with chromium. The reason on why these search engines are selected, instead of the commonly used Google search engine, is that these search engines, like StartPage, Qwant, Lilo, etc., can cater more data privacy protection measures with their search engine algorithms. Unlike Google search engine, such selected alternative search engines do not have any in-built trackers embedded within their source code during programming sessions. Hence, users who make use of UR Browser’s selected search engines will not have any concerns with their online data or information being gathered, shared and misused for unappropriated purposes.

Everyone deserves to have a safe and secure Internet surfing sessions with a stable and protected connection from one device to another, regardless of any places and any point in time. UR Browser is the ideal private browser for all to deserve to help promote a safe online environment.

Small team, great achievements and even bigger ambitions for 2019!

privacy browser vpn

2018: Guerrilla Anti-Tracking and Embedded Virtual Private Network Shielding

We are still a start-up and even though we are a small team, and do not always get to address all your messages and needs, they do concern us and we do listen to them! Thank you for that!

We are sharing all of them with our product team who is prioritizing each of those along with our planned features and improvements, so that they will be eventually addressed.

For the past year, we had to reduce the communication efforts in favor of focusing more on the product and achieving some major milestones:

  1. Improve stability and security with UR 61 release, (do we want to link to an old version in this post vs. just having a reference to it in plain text?) adding anti-fingerprinting capabilities and improving the HTTPs enforcing;
  2. Introduce a unique feature in the browser: a full VPN client with UR 62, not only to protect the browser traffic but all your device’s traffic;

We will not talk about the first one as we already have on the blog and it’s already too old, we are already working to bring UR to Chromium 71.

We do want to share with you more about the latest VPN feature and why we considered it such an import part of the puzzle.

Why does a browser need a VPN?

For those of you who are not aware of what a VPN is and why you should use one here is a short intro.

By its’ meaning a Virtual Private Network is an internet security service that allows users to access the Internet as though they were connected to a private network. This encrypts the Internet communications as well as providing a strong degree of anonymity. Some of the most common reasons people use VPNs are for location anonymity, the right to online privacy, to protect against snooping on public Internet connections, to circumvent Internet censorship, or to connect to a business’s internal network for remote work purposes.

Generally, when users create an Internet connection to visit a website or to access an online service, most Internet traffic is unencrypted and very public. The device that initiates the request through a browser or another app, will connect to their Internet Service Provider (ISP), and then the ISP will connect to the Internet to find the appropriate web server to fetch the request website or service. Information is exposed with every step of the Internet request. The IP address is exposed throughout the process, the ISP and any other intermediary can keep logs of the user’s browsing habits and interests. Moreover, the data flow between the user’s devices and the webservers is unencrypted, which creates opportunities for malicious actors to spy on the data or perpetrate attacks on the user, such as a man-in-the-middle attack.

When using a trusted VPN service to connect to the Internet, users gain a higher level of security and privacy by:

  • The VPN client connects to the ISP by creating an encrypted connection
  • The ISP connects the VPN client to the VPN server, maintaining the encrypted connection
  • The VPN server decrypts the received data from the user’s device and then connects to the Internet to access the web server in an unencrypted communication, exposing only the IP address of the VPN server and masking users’ IP

How VPN works. What is a VPN.

This is known as a ‘VPN tunnel’ the encrypted connection between the VPN Client and VPN server passes through the ISP, blocking the ISP and/or malicious actors from seeing a user’s activity.

 

Beware, VPN and Proxy extensions are not enough!

In the past UR explored, as did other competitors, the so-called ‘VPN extensions’ or ‘proxy-extensions.’ They offered a similar service as a VPN but with a few important drawbacks like: not fully encrypted communications and solely browser request protection, excluding by its tech limitations the requests issued by any other apps running on the device.  A potential negative effect of this lack of coverage could be – the location was masked while surfing websites w

ith UR, yet other local apps/services would expose user’s location when communicating with their servers on the Internet. To avoid such scenarios users would have had to subscribe in addition, to other VPN services, requiring the installation of an additional software: a VPN client.

We stopped that type of service a while ago when such weaknesses surfaced.  However, many players in the space continue to proposes ‘proxy-like’ features advertised as VPNs, while not offering true VPN protection.

Leveraging open-source, with the power of Open VPN and a great partnership (don’t want to promote another solution and took out the links), we have built a powerful and multi-faceted privacy took that combines the utility of a browser with the protection of a VPN.

In addition to standard private browsing features, UR Browser now offers the same level of protection as other stand-alone VPN clients. And as usual, we’ve made it extremely simple to use so that not only tech savvy users can benefit from it.

If this solution is appealing to you, check it out now ! (currently available only for Windows)

2019: Let the real privacy battle begin!

Still in beta but improving rapidly, here are some key updates you can expect from UR in 2019:

  • The latest Chromium patches (on Windows, and as soon as possible on Mac too)
  • Upgraded privacy and anti-tracking features
  • An improved browser anti-fingerprinting technology (more on browser anti-fingerprinting here)
  • A bunch of under-the-hood and functional fixes (for example online streaming services and translations services had been disabled due to privacy concerns, now will become optional)
  • A VPN build for Mac
  • New features like secure account synchronization, improved bookmarks and offline web content management
  • Integrated private Search engine

We are considering opening our source code too while mobile and Linux versions are in planning as well, and should go into development later this year.

These are some of our resolutions for 2019, wish us good luck to achieve the most!

 

 

© 2023 UR Browser Blog

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑