# Delete Safari and change mobile browser criteria

**URL:** https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/delete-safari-and-change-mobile-browser-criteria/18524
**Category:** Tool Suggestions
**Tags:** rejected
**Created:** 2024-05-26T07:00:47Z
**Posts:** 13
**Showing post:** 6 of 13

## Post 6 by @Sharply — 2024-08-16T01:55:32Z

IMO This should be reconsidered. I believe that we should recommend Brave for iOS & reconsider our position on Safari. Allow me to explain.

I’ll first establish why I disagree with the reasoning PG currently provides:

[According to PG](https://www.privacyguides.org/en/tools/#private-web-browsers):

> We recommend **Safari** alongside a tracker-blocker like [AdGuard](https://www.privacyguides.org/en/browser-extensions/#adguard) on iOS, because all iOS browsers are forced to be based on Safari anyways. This reduces the number of parties you’re required to trust.

@anon55464882 ‘s comments above seem to echo this sentiment.

I find this logic highly flawed, particularly for one reason: We’re also recommending people install AdGuard on top of Safari anyways. ~~Content blockers like AdGuard require deep & extensive access to the browser to do their job~~ (See correction below). You are of course increasing the number of parties you trust there, there’s no way around that. You are putting trust in AdGuard. I personally have no issue trusting AdGuard here, but that’s irrelevant: let’s not ignore the fact that we are fundamentally increasing our attack surface & the parties we trust by installing their app & enabling their Safari extension.

Edit: See @BionicBison’s replies below, looks like this amount of access is only required for some advanced blocking? I think we might want to clarify & potentially recommend against this setting if we stick to current criteria.

With that being said, I still believe that we are increasing the parties we trust, because even without this advanced blocking enabled, we still have to trust AdGuard & filter maintainers not to implement any malicious filtering rules. Now back to my original points:

With that out of the way, I’ll now establish why I’m recommending Brave in particular and what benefits it brings over Safari.

Brave:

- Is Open Source

- Has stronger & more effective content blocking than AdGuard + Safari (Easy example of this off the top of my head is [speedtest.net](https://www.speedtest.net/) - On Safari, I see a banner asking to install the app even with AdGuard (& Annoyances filters enabled), meanwhile on Brave I don’t.)

- Brave’s content blocking on iOS also [has support for removing URL tracking parameters](https://github.com/brave/adblock-resources/pull/197) - Apple appears to have added some form of this functionality to Safari fairly recently, but their list can’t be expanded and likely isn’t as effective as using a filter like AdGuard’s URL Tracking Protection (& potentially Actually Legitimate URL Shortener Tool if that’s now supported as well, need to test…)

- Supports adding custom filter lists & other basic functionality that AdGuard’s extension either lacks or locks behind a paywall

- Supports toggling JavaScript per-site

- Automatically redirects AMP pages

- Supports Global Privacy Control

- Allows adding custom search engines… (It is literally only possible to use 1/4 of the search engines we recommend on Safari without buying some kind of extension, which also even further increases attack surface & trust in another party…)

- Etc…

These features provide clear & meaningful improvements to user privacy, and I hope this outlines why I disagree with the notion that the benefit of using another browser over Safari on iOS is “minimal”.

I don’t think Safari is particularly a bad choice when it comes to a browser like this, but I feel like it’s silly to ignore the clear benefits that other browsers like Brave can provide.

I’m curious to hear what the community thinks about this.

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