Russian based Yandex Browser promises some privacy-focused features that other secure browser doesn’t offer. But, one thing that remains in everyone’s mind, is Yandex browser safe as Russian can use it to spy.
Web browsers have become a privacy guard these days for internet users. When users visit any site, the browser comes first. Anything they do online such as watching movies, performing a digital transaction requires a browser. How you choose the browser depends on what you want from it.
Some people create a profile in the browser to save their credentials such as login passwords and usernames of various accounts. This is because people think that a browser ensures the safety and privacy of the data.
Best, safe, and most secure browsers like Firefox, Brave, Tor, and a few others are already available on the market and almost perfect in their field. After all these excellent choices, should we use the Yandex Browser?
Let’s see what makes Yandex different from other browsers after that I will comment on “Is Yandex Browser Safe for Online Privacy”.
Yandex Browser
Yandex Browser is a Russian based freeware web browser developed by Yandex Corporation. It is based on the Chromium open-source project and uses the same engine as Chrome and Opera do. Lots of modification and development steps were involved to make it different from other Chromium-based browsers, especially Chrome, still, it inherits few features from them.
In Russia, both the Yandex Browser and Yandex Search Engine are very popular and give tough competition to Google Chrome and Search Engine. That’s the reason Yandex regularly updates it to add new features to attract more users.
Users can download the Yandex Browser on multiple platforms like Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android. For iOS, Yandex supports 11.0 or later versions only.
Download Yandex
Is Yandex Browser Safe?
Yandex Browser offers impressive security and privacy option for everyone who uses the browser. While using the Yandex Browser, the user will not feel any unresponsive page, the interface is great and the settings panel is clearly placed. Settings and Customization are good enough to tune the privacy level.
In spite of Chromium-based, Yandex has added some extra menus to make it more useful and different from others. Yandex has three special menu bar named Add-ons, Settings, and Security. Let’s see what these menus offer to keep privacy and security at a standard level.
1. Add-ons: This menu has really some cool features and varies from Online Safety to Data Management. Online Safety has further three features that prevent a web page from loading unnecessary content. The features are Antishock, Flash Content Blocking, and Adguard.
Antishock blocks ads with shocking, un-pleasant, and aggressive images and animations. Flash Content Blocking feature blocks flash banners and videos, however, it may result in loss of audio in the video. So better to disable it for unrestricted video content.
Users don’t need to install any ad blocking plugin with Yandex. Its Adguard feature blocks pop-up windows, video ads, and flashing banners when entered into any websites which have ads loaded on it.
Other useful features are Turbo, Lightshot, Evernote, LastPass, and Pocket. Turbo boosts web page loading time and saves data. LastPass has the ability to save passwords and secure access from any device.
2. Settings: Settings menu includes some general and basic setting options. This menu is all about how users organize Yandex Browser for your daily uses. Here users can set some preferences and settings to make it a little bit faster by discarding unused tabs and optimize images.
Yandex Browser also has proxy settings and the user can set it manually. Apart from that, it warns/load sites if the HTTPS version of the website is missing or available. Even users can connect to State Standard(GOST) Encryption.
Yandex Translate is similar to Google Translate and works pretty well. Here you will get an integrated translater with the browser and can translate the whole page in any language.
3. Security: Security menu has a Threat Security feature which is the most important feature in terms of privacy and protection. Users can not find some of the Threat Security features in any available browsers and that makes Yandex Browser completely different. As soon as you enter any websites, it performs security checks on websites and downloaded files.
It seems Yandex Browser has more privacy concerns towards the banking system. It gives additional features to perform any transaction and bank-related work in protection mode. Phishing protection for bank cards is also a good feature.
For a secure connection, Yandex has the ability to use custom or various available DNS servers. Users don’t need to run for any other DNS server if he uses Yandex Browser. It offers a few third-party DNS servers. All available DNS servers promise safe search and blocking of adult contents, malware, and children’s restricted contents.
The DNS Server list is:
We have seen all the privacy and security related features of Yandex Browser and truly seems impressive, even competitor doesn’t offer such features. By seeing such features, anyone can say it is safe for privacy.
However, Privacy-Policy says something different that is different from the privacy features. I think the question “Is Yandex Browser Safe?” will remain the same until we see Yandex’s privacy policy.
Yandex Browser’s Privacy-Policy
Yandex’s Privacy-Policy is very lengthy. In short, it conveys that Yandex Browser collects user’s personal data including identity, contact number, age, email, site, search a few more. In my review of other browsers, I think it collects more personal data than any other browser. Here is the list of data Yandex Browser Collects.
Final Words On “Is Yandex Browser Safe”
It is very bad that Yandex collects this much amount of data even after offering privacy features. Well, I will not recommend Yandex Browser to anyone. If you don’t care about personal data, then you can use it.
“Is Yandex Browser Safe?” No, it is not safe for online privacy, though it protects you from bad and malware websites, Yandex itself collects more data than the websites.
Better try Firefox or Brave Browser, both are excellent and offer complete privacy if used with a VPN. Read here to know more about the Most secure Browers.
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Thank You