Vanadium - privacy questions

MetropleX Following on from my colleague matchboxbananasynergy I have cleaned up the thread of said non technical posts.

It's meaningful approach. Thank you for that. ;)

matchboxbananasynergy Brave is a Chromium fork, so it already benefits from the security features that Chromium provides by default.

On top of that, they add some rudimentary fingeprinting protections (as best as you're going to get unless you're using Tor Browser)

Does that mean that brave is a better option as vanadium for fingerprinting protection?
In which situations is vanadium a better option than brave?

bartenderstoneware test it out for yourself. Go to coveryourtracks.eff.org with both Brave and Vanadium (or even Tor Browser) and take your own conclusions...

bartenderstoneware Vanadium provides additional security. One of the biggest benefits to Vanadium is that it disables JIT by default, which is a huge benefit, since many exploits rely on it to work. Brave doesn't have that.

The website PrivacyTests.org is helpful and provides data-driven results regarding the ability to block and mitigate fingerprinting for major Internet browsers. Vanadium, though, is not included in the tests.

The maintainer of the project is a current Brave employee, as per his About page in his website. I, personally, don't think this affects the results, but I think it's fair to mention it.

matchboxbananasynergy is it possible to disable JIT in Brave or other browsers?

bartenderstoneware Kind of. I don't think you can realistically do it on Brave Android, but you can kind of do it on the desktop version, by launching the browser with a specific flag. More info here:

https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/19872

The issue with this approach is that it disables JIT across the board, and there's no per-site toggle to enable/disable it as you please. You'll eventually run into breakage and won't have an option other than to enable it again.

Microsoft Edge also has this, but I'm not sure if it's available on the Android version.

matchboxbananasynergy
Thank you for your fast and detailed answer. I'll read through.

I'm wondering if it's possible to get NoScript as an add-on on vanadium? And if yes, is it recommendable do add it?

bartenderstoneware Chromium on Android doesn't support extensions, so by extension, Vanadium doesn't either.

That said, you can disable JavaScript globally, as well as per-site through the settings.

matchboxbananasynergy
Thanks good to know. That's how I use it already.