X-RAY · 14 SEPTEMBER 2026
Five browsers, four websites: how much tracking each one let through
Chrome, Brave, Firefox, Safari and DuckDuckGo on a Mac with its DNS going through GUARDIANA: the same four websites, two minutes each, freshly created profiles and the Mac's DNS cache emptied before each one. Out of 223 advertising and tracking names seen, Chrome let 188 through and DuckDuckGo 7.
How to read this. GUARDIANA writes down every name the machine asks to resolve (DNS). What is compared here is not the websites but the browsers: the same four pages, the same time, and how many of the advertising and tracking names each browser let reach the network.
Scoreboard
Out of the 223 advertising, tracking and telemetry names seen across the whole test, how many each browser let through and how many it kept in.
| Browser | Let through | Kept in | The maker's own services | Let through the least |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chrome | 188 | 35 | 27 | |
| Brave | 158 | 65 | 9 | |
| Firefox | 117 | 106 | 4 | |
| Safari | 68 | 155 | 0 | |
| DuckDuckGo | 7 | 216 | 4 | yes |
None of the five is a wall, but the distance between them is enormous. It is a result of these four sites on this day, not a general verdict.
What it says
None of the five is a wall, but the difference between them is enormous: DuckDuckGo let 7 advertising and tracking names through on the same four sites where Chrome let 188 through. Safari, Firefox and Brave sit in between, in that order. And all five talk to their own maker the moment they open.
Chrome
Chrome looks up Google on its own; that is to be expected in a Google browser. Blocking trackers is not part of its default settings.
Firefox
Browsing measured from the inside with WebDriver BiDi, with the DNS cache emptied just before; its tracking protection blocks silently, so there is no list of what it stopped.
Safari
Opened by hand in a normal window, with the machine's profile (Safari does not allow an empty one to be created from outside) and the DNS cache emptied just before.
DuckDuckGo
Opened by hand (it cannot be driven from the inside), after going through its welcome screen without changing any setting, with the DNS cache emptied just before.
What can be claimed
- All five browsers contact their maker's services the moment they open, without the person doing anything: updates, remote settings and, in several of them, usage statistics switched on by default.
- With their default settings, no browser stopped all the tracking on the four sites; the scoreboard says how much each let through.
- Brave resolves by DNS names it then blocks, so whoever answers the DNS sees them anyway.
- Firefox, freshly installed and untouched, tried to use somebody else's encrypted DNS (cloudflare-dns.com); GUARDIANA recorded it as "DNS evasion".
What cannot be claimed
- That the machine went on to connect to those services, or that it sent anything: what is seen here is that the machine asked for the name. A connection almost always follows, but a browser also looks names up ahead of time and sometimes never uses them.
- What is sent when there is a connection, or what anyone read: GUARDIANA sees names, not content.
- That a site is "spying": these are documented advertising, measurement and delivery services, and each name is published.
- That the one loading least is the best, nor that a low figure means no tracking: they are names, not intentions.
Data and method
Full data: cinco-navegadores-2026-09-14.csv. Method: each browser opened with a freshly created profile and the Mac's DNS cache emptied just before, then the same four sites for two minutes; Chrome, Brave and Firefox driven from the inside, Safari and DuckDuckGo by hand because they cannot be driven; names taken from the machine's GUARDIANA ledger for each time window. The tools are in the program's repository (site/src/radiografia/); anyone can repeat the test with Guardiana installed.
Brands named as the names of their owners. If you are the owner and something here is inaccurate, write to hola@guardianagroup.com: it is corrected, with the date.