I don't see why I wouldn't use Firefox itself over a closed-source fork with no visible advantages.
Waterfox Browser
31–40 of 111 posts
Re: Waterfox Browser
#32> Waterfox does not collect ANY telemetry, meaning you don't have to worry about any tracking or usage information about what you do inside YOUR browser.
This is woefully uninformed or malicious. There's a lot of tracking that is out of your hands. Such as canvas fingerprinting. Even sending back 0's (like tor does) doesn't prevent fingerprinting. In either case I lost confidence for the browser just by reading what was on their landing page.
Either they don't know that tactics like this are common, which means that they likely aren't aware of other basic security flaws. Or they are aware and lying, which begs the question of how we can trust anything else.
In either case it doesn't build trust for a tool that is so highly dependent upon trust.
Re: Waterfox Browser
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, projects like this give me the heebie-jeebies, to be honest. NPAPI and XUL were discontinued for really good reasons. Some users say they still want them, but that's because (1) people hate change, even when it's good for them and (2) they don't really appreciate all the security baggage those old APIs were lugging around with them. Projects that assure those users that they can keep on trucking with their old…
The problem is that the replacement is crippled and Google is clearly more interested in stripping features from the extension API. I'm still waiting for a way to hide the tab bar which is a privileged UI feature now.
> "I'm still waiting for a way to hide the tab bar which is a privileged UI feature now"
userChrome.css to the rescue:
- Tree Style Tab's wiki offers tips to do exactly that: https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-fo... .
- Or you can combine the address and tab bar: https://github.com/rstacruz/firefox-stealthfox
If none is to your exact taste, https://www.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS/ may help.
Re: Waterfox Browser
#34I don't see why I wouldn't use Firefox itself over a closed-source fork with no visible advantages.
Isn't this the source code? https://github.com/MrAlex94/Waterfox
Re: Waterfox Browser
#35Says limited data collection Proceeds to use Google Analytics on waterfox.net
You seem obsessed with this. :)
Yes :).
But in either case, if the browser is advocating for "no data collection" and "no telemetry" I would at least expect no referral links or Google Analytics on their homepage.
Re: Waterfox Browser
#36Are there any similar projects in the Chromium world?
Re: Waterfox Browser
#37I don't see why I wouldn't use Firefox itself over a closed-source fork with no visible advantages.
Isn't this the source code? https://github.com/MrAlex94/Waterfox
It isn't linked from https://www.waterfox.net at all, so hard to say
Re: Waterfox Browser
#38> Waterfox does not collect ANY telemetry, meaning you don't have to worry about any tracking or usage information about what you do inside YOUR browser. This is woefully uninformed or malicious. There's a lot of tracking that is out of your hands. Such as canvas fingerprinting. Even sending back 0's (like tor does) doesn't prevent fingerprinting. In either case I lost confidence for the browser just by reading what…
It's not worded precisely, but I believe what they have in mind is tracking performed without prior consent by the browser author. Obviously if you don't block tracking scripts that doesn't protect you from websites that want to track you, but that's not the point of the statement.
Re: Waterfox Browser
#39Why does it need to send your OS and browser version to check for updates? Couldn't it just look up whatever the latest versions are?
Well, I guess you can check for update without disclosing OS, but since binaries differ between OS you need to disclose OS to actually download the update.
Browser version is not necessary, but sending browser version allows serving smaller binary diff instead of full binary, which Firefox actually does.
Re: Waterfox Browser
#40> Waterfox does not collect ANY telemetry, meaning you don't have to worry about any tracking or usage information about what you do inside YOUR browser. This is woefully uninformed or malicious. There's a lot of tracking that is out of your hands. Such as canvas fingerprinting. Even sending back 0's (like tor does) doesn't prevent fingerprinting. In either case I lost confidence for the browser just by reading what…
I think they are claiming "you don't have to worry about any tracking or usage information being sent to the Waterfox developers," but if so, they shouldn't say "you don't have to worry" (see also Lavabit and Protonmail's "you don't have to worry about government surveillance... well, not until the government decides to surveil you"). I agree it's weird for a web browser of all products to omit this clarity!