Speaking of privacy, it’s important to distinguish this concept from that of security. Ad-blockers are probably the most vital, as ads are a common vector for malware, and an ad-blocker usually performs other security and privacy functions, such as script-blocking and tracking protection.Īlthough some browsers come with this functionality built in (as you can see on our most secure web browser ranking), these are usually not as good as dedicated extensions. This is a tough question, as security is a wide category that covers all sorts of extensions. What Makes the Best Web Browser Security Extension? Generally the only way to find out if it works is to test it out, which we’ve done.
Although all extensions from the Chrome Web Store are compatible with Chrome itself, whether or not they work with browsers derived from Chromium (read our Chromium review) is more hit-and-miss.
This is because Chrome (read our Google Chrome review) is by far the most popular browser in the world, with somewhere between 45 and 70 percent of desktop users favoring Chrome, depending on what source you get your statistics from.įurthermore, Chrome extensions are, by and large, compatible with several other browsers that are based on Chromium, including Brave, Vivaldi and Opera.īecause of this, this article will focus largely on the best Google Chrome plugins. You can add plugins to Google Chrome that perform a variety of tasks, but for this article we’ll be focusing specifically on the best browser security extensions. The size of these libraries varies greatly, but the largest one by far is Chrome’s. These days, many browsers come with libraries of extensions or plugins for you to install on top of the default application.