Having just watched the posted video, what other conclusion is there?
Time to remove firef#ck..
Firefox done?
I left Firefox for the LibreWolf fork over a year ago because of the privacy invasive things Mozilla where doing. And what they were doing back then is nothing against what they are doing now. At least the forks will keep patching all that out, and still be safe to use.
Some distros, including KickSecure and QubesOS, have already considered switching away from Firefox as their default browser, but not progressed much because of no sustainable and reputable alternative. Maybe this will be what will finally cause that change to happen?
I think, this does not affect Mullvad (https://mullvad.net/en/browser/hard-facts). I ditched vanilla FF years ago and use Mullvad for almost everything. And for a handful of sites I trust and have accounts with, Safari or Chromium is fine, they know who I am without fingerprinting and tracking, they don't have it in the first place.
But for a distro to package the FF is much bigger headache, I agree
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Something people are forgetting is that Librewolf and Mullvad are both forks of Firefox. Even Tor browser is a fork. That means the deterioration of Firefox will mean it will affect all other forks. At the very least, it will mean more work for the maintainers of those forks. If Mozilla continue going in this direction, it will be a battle uphill.
We still have options. Don't forget Brave. And arkenfox user.js. I tend to prefer arkenfox over librewolf since I have more control.
Falkon, Qutebrowser and Floorp are alternative options. Each have their strengths and use cases. These are lesser known browsers that probably aren't the best for security, and their privacy might not be as good as Brave or Librewolf, but they are options nonetheless.
I switched to Brave about a year ago for a very specific reason, the lack of native dark mode on FF (without disabling RFP). Dark Reader works but it isn't as good as Brave's (or more appropriately Chrome's) native dark mode implementation and tends to crash occasionally with large pages, and doesn't always work. Firefox's bookmarks functionality is far superior which is important for me, but not as important as dark mode.
As long as Brave exists, we're not doing too bad.
gk7ncklxlts99w1 As long as Brave exists, we're not doing too bad.
Brave is just another Chromium derivative and not an alternative for people wanting less Google in their lives. They also have questionable management and design choices.
gk7ncklxlts99w1 Qutebrowser
Is a good, but as you said a niche option, especially with it's keyboard centric usage. Those who use *nix systems and live in terminal probably know and use it, rest, not so much.
argante those are some harsh accusations. Do you have a source that Brave is mining crypto on user machines?
TOR Browser isn't even built for privacy or security as their main goal, but anonymity. TOR doesn't prevent fingerprinting as an active measure, it just tries to keep the fingerprint non-unique which sort of works when all users keep the default settings.
Vanadium is also not the solution for these problems. It's built with security as the main focus and doesn't offer the privacy features (blocking fingerprinting) that you claim it does.
n3t_admin TOR Browser isn't even built for privacy or security as their main goal, but anonymity
And that's the main point 99% of people who claim TOR is the solution don't get right... The Tor project and their tools have their place, but this is not an everyday use for all those "privacy concious" Jane Does thinking bundling VPN+Tor on top of socks5 proxy is the way to go...
But there's no discussion with certain people. Thou I agree brave is not a browser I'd use.. Even thou many seem to be recommending it.
this has nothing to do with mining crypto, especially on user machines. It was about payments that were made to creators that didn't have BAT enabled/no way to collect the received BAT.
argante And they failed. Their entire anonymity is based on javascript blocking. But even that is no longer necessary to find an IP. This is just a small demonstration of what can be done with just CSS.
From the TOR project:
In the end, the approach chosen by Tor developers is simple: all Tor users should have the exact same fingerprint. No matter what device or operating system you are using, your browser fingerprint should be the same as any device running Tor
Their "entire anonymity" isn't just based on JS blocking. It's mostly based on blending in with the crowd.
argante This is not a correct statement. Vanadium blocks ads, but there are no settings to prevent the risk of unique fingerprinting.
I don't know what makes my statement "not correct" in this case. Blocking ads isn't a privacy feature.
What's more, about 22-23% of Tor nodes are set up by government agencies to de-anomize users.
argante https://blog.torproject.org/malicious-relays-health-tor-network/
https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2021/12/was-threat-actor-kax17-de-anonymizing-the-tor-network
There is no such claim in any of your sources. They are blog posts from 2021 that describe events in the past, not the present. The Malwarebytes article speculates briefly that the nodes were set up by state actors, but we can't be sure of that.
argante 22-23% is the general estimate that can be found
Found where? Who is doing the estimating, and how are they estimating that number? Forgive me, but it's quite a bold claim to be throwing around. It's fair to claim it if it's backed up by evidence. You seem sure about it so I would expect at least some tangible evidence to be presented.
argante 5 1/2 year old complaints about Brave. Are they still issues today? As far as I can tell, Brave doesn't act as a miner, at least without user permission.
And TOR's "entire anonymity" does not only rely on disabling JavaScript. If that were the case, all anyone would have to do is disabled JavaScript on any browser they use. You are not being very intellectually honest.
guser39 It's a privacy focused browser. I think it is absolutely an alternative for people who want less Google, given that it has strong privacy protections in place, not just to protect from Google but any tracking company. Don't let the word "chromium" fool you into thinking it's somehow Google sponsored spyware. You're shooting yourself in the foot.
Every company has questionable management and design choices.
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I think they're best to be ignored. Nothing this person says will be substantiated with evidence, they're all about being bombastic. It's people like this that give privacy a bad name.
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From the official GOS account on Mastodon:
The only other browser [besides Vanadium] we can currently recommend is Brave. It preserves most of the security of mobile Chromium while adding more state partitioning, anti-fingerprinting and the most advanced content filtering engine. Vanadium is more secure but needs to catch up in those areas.
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/111966180001152300
There are lots of reasons that some folks might dislike Brave.
Private company, runs an ad network, crypto, AI.
But there's no perfect browser out there. Brave is one of the least bad choices, per the GOS account:
If you rule out Brave then there's no mobile browser alternative to Chrome or Edge we can recommend due to lack of basic security.
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/113948398641752397
Also, about Firefox and variants:
Firefox doesn't have a basic content sandbox on Android, let alone site isolation, and it has a lot of other security deficiencies.
The browsers referring to themselves as hardened Firefox variants only harden privacy, not security, and in fact most bring more security issues.
This applies to the Tor Browser too.