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Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

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Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#161

Post by tehbeard »

watermelon0 wrote: post #134
heavyset_go wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t want websites to be able to send notifications to my phone. You might not, but our users requested desktop and mobile notifications. The notifications let sick patients know when their prescriptions are ready, facilitate care-provider check ups, etc.

PWA cab be 'installed' to the device, similarly to 'Add to home screen' option. It would be reasonable to allow notifications only to installed PWA, and not just any website you visit.

This is what I've wanted safari/iOS to do.

They'd get to claim privacy/user safety (no drive by permissions grab)

But, this eats into their walled garden money pit, so yeah it's not going to happen..

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#162

Post by manuelmoreale »

paulmd wrote: post #105
bleachedsleet wrote: post #37

I love Safari as a browser, but I hate the fact that it neuters the web and makes it feel much less powerful. Web Bluetooth and webUSB are ignored by Safari and unsupported. Notification support is lacking last I checked. No PWA functionality to speak of and webNFC won’t be added. Extensions are lacking largely due to being basically native apps that bring with them all the cost and overhead of being such. As a brows…

The only thing I really miss on Safari is a good adblocker. Everything else is fine, I don't use my mobile browser the way I do on desktop.

You might want to give the combination of 1Blocker (https://1blocker.com/) and NextDNS (https://nextdns.io/) a try. Personally using both on all my Apple devices and they work great IMO.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#163

Post by endless1234 »

Google234 wrote: post #142
yunohn wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Push notifications go through apple/google servers. The advantage of PWA notifications is that they can be local - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web... .

You don’t get it, 100s of billion of these notifications have been shown already to users on desktop with a less than 1% accept rate. These are spam .

What a weird argument. We're not talking about suspicious blogospam sites asking for notification access here. By the same token, most email sent is spam. Should we stop using email?

Spammy notification requests should be mitigated with better browser guards for requesting them. The fact that there is spam does not somehow invalidate that there are legitimate use cases people want them for.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#164

Post by pmontra »

Google234 wrote: post #141
cforrester wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just because you have a good use doesn’t outweigh the all the bad abuse. Personally, this is how I feel about downloading apps to my phone for every individual service and product. I see no need to download a separate app for each individual service I'm interested in, as the potential for abuse is higher than getting the occasional notification from my browser app and visiting their website. However, it sounds to m…

99% of apps you download aren’t spam unlike the 99% of web notification requests that are spanmy

I agree, because I've become picky about what I install. I tend to use only open source apps, especially from F-Droid.

However I routinely deny notification requests in Firefox so this is not a problem. I also routinely deny the permission to use canvas image data. Firefox warns it can be used to fingerprint browsers https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-protection-agai...

Sadly Apple does its best to make more money. If they allow other browser engines they'd end up selling less apps. IMHO they'll care about privacy only until it positively correlates with making money. If it will ever cost them more than it gains, they'll find a way to weaken privacy without losing face.

An example, Apple ruthlessly enforcing in app payments for small companies but bowing to Netflix, Amazon and the like. They know they would sell less phones if those apps won't run on iOS.

And that's expected. Why would a company care about you and me in this age? No more than what you and me would care about ants.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#165

Post by visarga »

onion2k wrote: post #120
Google234 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t want websites to be able to send notifications to my phone. Sites abuses this and are always asking on my computer and it’s too easy to accidentally say accept.

The default setting for notifications in Chrome is "Sites can ask to send notifications", but you can set that to false in "Preferences > Privacy and security > Site settings > Notifications" and you'll never see the browser popup again. This is a feature that Chrome has had for about 6 years. The fact you haven't discovered it shows Chrome's UX could be better, but the fact you haven't searched for it might alsp sho…

Yeah, it's an old "feature" that makes me immediately close the site and never come back. The culprit is usually a random newspaper.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#166

Post by paulmd »

manuelmoreale wrote: post #162
paulmd wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing I really miss on Safari is a good adblocker. Everything else is fine, I don't use my mobile browser the way I do on desktop.

You might want to give the combination of 1Blocker ( https://1blocker.com/ ) and NextDNS ( https://nextdns.io/ ) a try. Personally using both on all my Apple devices and they work great IMO.

Will definitely give 1blocker a try. I hadn't thought of going with the route of tampering with DNS but that's a good idea, same basic idea as pihole.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#167

Post by sbuk »

JohnBooty wrote: post #64
fragile_frogs wrote: post #33

> Conversely, if Safari refuses to implement some alleged 'feature', it becomes much less useful even if Chrome does implement it. How is Safari not implementing standards seen as a good thing? While I do acknowledge that there might be privacy concerns when it comes to Chrome, I do appreciate that Google is trying to push the Web forward, while Apple is trying to hold the Web back. Safari truly is the worst browser,…

Ohh and you are on Windows and wan't to debug something on Safari? Forget it. Yeah, this utterly baffles me. You'd think Apple, out of sheer self-interest, would offer some sort of "Safari for Developers" that runs on Windows/Linux. Even if it's some kind of klunky suboptimally-performant thing. Just make it really obvious in terms of it's branding and theming that it's devs-only.

Epiphany uses WebKit...

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#168

Post by onion2k »

yunohn wrote: post #147
onion2k wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The speaks to your inexperience making applications - using anecdotes and assumptions about "the average user" to determine what to do is nowhere near as useful as asking your actual users. Real data is better than guesswork.

I have built global apps, and found that users struggle to even accept email address confirmations. The reality is that email is dying.

That's true for the users you've seen. My users all open emails with no problem.

Now do you see why "the average user" isn't useful to determine how to build something? Even if most people suck at using email, in my app it works well.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#169

Post by gkbrk »

bleachedsleet wrote: post #37

I love Safari as a browser, but I hate the fact that it neuters the web and makes it feel much less powerful. Web Bluetooth and webUSB are ignored by Safari and unsupported. Notification support is lacking last I checked. No PWA functionality to speak of and webNFC won’t be added. Extensions are lacking largely due to being basically native apps that bring with them all the cost and overhead of being such. As a brows…

Web Bluetooth and Web USB, along with other useless things like Web Battery that Google loves don't make the web more powerful. It only serves to make the web more bloated and user hostile. And making new browsers that much harder to implement while taking the time of existing competitors.

As a user I have never needed or wanted web bluetooth or web usb, and I have never seen a person in real life that uses these either. For all I know, it's just mythical users mentioned in HN comments that want those.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#170

Post by tchalla »

paulmd wrote: post #105
bleachedsleet wrote: post #37

I love Safari as a browser, but I hate the fact that it neuters the web and makes it feel much less powerful. Web Bluetooth and webUSB are ignored by Safari and unsupported. Notification support is lacking last I checked. No PWA functionality to speak of and webNFC won’t be added. Extensions are lacking largely due to being basically native apps that bring with them all the cost and overhead of being such. As a brows…

The only thing I really miss on Safari is a good adblocker. Everything else is fine, I don't use my mobile browser the way I do on desktop.

Wipr is really good.

https://giorgiocalderolla.com/wipr.html

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