While I really love the features that Yandex browser provides, I’m confused as to whether it’s safe to use or not considering that most companies are or have moved out of Russia and abandoned the services. Not to ignite any political conversation, though.
Yandex is leagues above anything else I’ve used on Android in terms of accessibility since it has all 3 of the following:
- Allows desktop chrome extensions (in my case, Deluminate). This does allow the full power of desktop ublock origin as well if you like that, but it’s not the main concern for me.
- Auto-adjusts text to screen width meaning no constant sideway scrolling. Note that this is specifically for text, it doesn’t force the entire page on a single long column, which I don’t want.
- Allows you to force desktop mode sites.
In other browsers, I either have to zoom in to a ridiculous degree because of lack of good dark modes (lack of desktop Chrome extensions), have to sideway scroll constantly, or have to content with sites trying to force mobile “friendly” pages on me.
There are some other bonus features I like about it as well, such as actually allowing you to easily manipulate the URL of the page you are currently on from the address field to go elsewhere (e.g. on Wikipedia) rather than doing its best trying to hide it, but the above is the big 3 which is what made me decide on using the browser.
Safe wouldn’t be the first word I used, no. It’s to Russia what Opera is to China. Both are google chromium browsers that collects a lot of telemetry. chrome/ium is known as an easy platform for gathering private information data on people. The differences is where the data go first (once it’s available, it can be sold, shared, etc).
i use it in China. on windows and android. i was heard it will collects a lot of telemetry. but it is useful for me. despite it’s bad local translate.
actually i also use firefox and brave which are more safety.
Yandex Browser is a really very good product.I have used it for at least 6 months along with Vivaldi Browser.To me there are only two browsers that meet my needs Yandex and VivaldiI know It seems like a contrast as Vivaldi is privacy conscious and Yandex is the bad guy in the west and I am in the west but credit must go where it is due and Yandex is probably among the best 3 browsers in the world if not the best. Any tech savvy person would say similar stuff about it.
BUT
If your privacy is important Brave is the one I would suggest you should opt for. ( Not even duckduckgo) But if you need a good balance between perfect privacy and user friendliness + interface and all the other good stuff then I cannot recomment a better browser than Vivaldi. (balance is the key word here)
Yandex is just like any other company that makes money on your data. You can try it yourself and test it easily. Even google has trackers on it. Just install a realtime tracker and you will see what trackers they block on yandex. It is as bad as Edge or Google. But as it was mentionned somewhere below you can disable them or block them easily particularly if you are connecting from north america as they cant even show any adds if you are from the west. So it is like you are having a premium service without needing to disable adds. They just dont have any adds. Not because they dont want to, because probably they are more flexible with connections from the west and they just dont have advertising agreements with western companies that English is a must when advirtising.
As for the concerns for Russian government involvment, It is really as bad as any country that has poor provacy laws. Like many other governments they track their own people in Russia and elsewhere where Russian security interests are involved.
I wouldn’t get scared as much if I were you. The only downside is once you encounter an issue the resolution has to come from Russia from their customer service. They communicate in english okay.
Russia is a different world. They are just built differently. So you would feel the difference once you contact a real person from customer service. They are kind and helpful. It is not negative but it is really different. And they are more helpful if you connect from the west particularly from north america.
All in all your choice depends on how much you want to give up your privacy to whom and why. Hope my experience helps
Yandex is most popular in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, the USA and Germany.
Yandex’s audience is 63.9 million people per day. And nothing happened to them.
I’ve not seen any real concerns besides speculations.
I like their design, the search engine actually does it’s job, mobile app allows extensions adguard and ublock origin is not supported 
Uso yandex hace 6 años y no tengo problemas. Prefiero que mis datos estén en manos rusas que con los occidentales genocidas y peste del planeta. Respecto a tus datos, que carajo le interesan a los rusos de un simple puto poblador suizo, congoleño, canadiense, boliviano???. Yandex tiene todo lo que necesito.
I think this is the wrong question … If you search in Yandex, you will get different search results … Google restricts results based on the approved narritive
Samsung Internet I believe is Yandex based. I like their browser and I use it on a non Samsung phone.
Nah, Yandex Browser is an ad for Yandex’s services with a Chromium engine. Outside of my personal feelings about the war and Russia’s government, I don’t use many of Yandex’s services, and having my data being sent to companies like Meta, Google and Microsoft is more than enough for me.
Only if you’re okay with sharing your personal data, browser history, passwords etc. with russian government
YANDEX IS SUPER GOOD!here is the following:
there are infinite games ,weather,search images,search videos,maps and translating plus IMAGE translating
fast like really fast
start using yandex by this:https://yandex.com/
that link above this chat is the website,not the browser
I use Yandex and beyond the occasional security alert from the Kremlin, it has never given me any major problems
Yes it is safe, i believe it is partnered with Kaspersky for downloads malware scanner and general browser security which they dub Yandex Protect.
You can change your DNS provider to any on a list (which is rather long compared to other browser) or a custom one.
I would say that in terms of security/privacy its halfway from the non-security/privacy browser to the more privacy oriented ones like Brave, Epic, Waterfox etc.
Its extremely stable even on beta, never had it crash like Edge or Chrome and it is typically the first to implement certain QoL features such as auto PiP which only Opera recently implemented, fully functional PiP with all the settings youd expect to see in the normal video player, workspaces which Opera and Edge/Chrome later also go in their own style etc
Made by russians, good enough reason not to touch it.
Did you ever consider looking at the multitude of times this question has already been asked, or doing some research yourself before thinking asking a bunch of randos a stupid question?
I’m not aware of them being involved in scandals like Opera. It’s probably safe but I wonder why you would want to use it? I can at least understand the appeal of the yandex search engine, it has better image search than any other engine I’ve tried.
Yandex is safe to use but the meta lobby is against it because meta spy on Americans to help Israeli terrorist organizations call MOSSAD