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LibreWolf – Custom version of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom

librewolf.net

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Re: LibreWolf – Custom version of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom

#11

Post by sneak »

Nextgrid wrote: post #4

There are many valid counterpoints on why you shouldn't trust/use this, but the mere existence of it raises a very valid point and calls Mozilla's BS; why does this fork exist at all if Mozilla supposedly cares about your privacy, security and freedom?

Mozilla ships Firefox with telemetry (aka spyware, given that it operates silently and automatically without consent) enabled by default. They also ship closed source DRM in the browser which infringes on software freedoms.

Mozilla doesn't actually care that much about privacy or freedom, it's just marketing to make line go up and to the right while Mozilla staff can keep collecting paychecks for being "the good guys". There's a lot of money involved.

There is a big disconnect between what they say and what they do.

They're not an ad company, so Google/Chrome is obviously worse, but if you care about privacy you don't ship a browser with surveillance features in it (which is what Firefox is).

I am happy this project exists, and I will support them. This is how free software is supposed to work.

Re: LibreWolf – Custom version of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom

#12

Post by sneak »

smnrg wrote: post #9
bashy wrote: post #3

Manual updates for macOS and repo link 404…?

Use brew.

If you're using this, you should be aware that the Homebrew package manager also includes the kind of nonconsensual surveillance features that this software patches out of Firefox.

For this reason I switched from Homebrew to Nixpkgs.

Re: LibreWolf – Custom version of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom

#14

Post by kornhole »

extr0pian wrote: post #10

Just yesterday I had noticed that, "Suggestions from sponsors" in the address bar had been turned back on after a recent Firefox update, and then installed Librewolf. I really want to use it as my main browser, but certain use cases such as online banking (at least with my credit union) doesn't seem to work properly, so I re-disabled "Suggestions from sponsors" in Firefox and went on with my day. Seriously, changing…

I use both Firefox and Librewolf to achieve browser isolation. Librewolf is my default browser for all anonymous browsing such as news sites. I use Firefox for all my real name ID account logins such as banking. This way your Librewolf browser fingerprint is never associated to your real ID.

Re: LibreWolf – Custom version of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom

#15

Post by robin_reala »

sneak wrote: post #12
smnrg wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use brew.

If you're using this, you should be aware that the Homebrew package manager also includes the kind of nonconsensual surveillance features that this software patches out of Firefox. For this reason I switched from Homebrew to Nixpkgs.

Nonconsensual? Homebrew lets you know upfront before they send anything to their (non-US) analytics server, and running `brew analytics off` turns off analytics permanently. Sure, opt-in in preferable, but this is as good as it gets for opt-out.

Re: LibreWolf – Custom version of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom

#16

Post by extr0pian »

kornhole wrote: post #14
extr0pian wrote: post #10

Just yesterday I had noticed that, "Suggestions from sponsors" in the address bar had been turned back on after a recent Firefox update, and then installed Librewolf. I really want to use it as my main browser, but certain use cases such as online banking (at least with my credit union) doesn't seem to work properly, so I re-disabled "Suggestions from sponsors" in Firefox and went on with my day. Seriously, changing…

I use both Firefox and Librewolf to achieve browser isolation. Librewolf is my default browser for all anonymous browsing such as news sites. I use Firefox for all my real name ID account logins such as banking. This way your Librewolf browser fingerprint is never associated to your real ID.

Yeah, I get the concept of using different browsers for different things to compartmentalize, and I've tried it, but to me it just seems like I'm making my life more complicated switching back and forth, and I feel like it's cluttering up my system. I love how Librewolf takes privacy to another level, but honestly, all I want is Firefox without all the BS and the ability to disable things I don't want (and not having them turned back on).

Re: LibreWolf – Custom version of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom

#18

Post by lucgommans »

robwert wrote: post #5

privacytests.org shows how Librewolf privacy testing scores compares to others.

Very interesting website! I submitted it[1] because it's quite the eye-opener for me (e.g. blob tracking is new to me, and if you click on the cell, it shows you PoC test code!) and I had missed its previous submission two years ago.

Brave, Librewolf, Mullvad, and Tor hide the user's screen dimensions, whereas Firefox and Chrome don't. I'm curious, how often does that break things? I imagine that quite a few sites use this for choosing how to position things with JavaScript. Certainly not a majority, but with how many websites an average techy visits on an average day, it might still be somewhat frequent that you get ill-fitting content.

Do you use Librewolf, or does someone else use it who can tell?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37433207

Re: LibreWolf – Custom version of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom

#19

Post by arsome »

extr0pian wrote: post #10

Just yesterday I had noticed that, "Suggestions from sponsors" in the address bar had been turned back on after a recent Firefox update, and then installed Librewolf. I really want to use it as my main browser, but certain use cases such as online banking (at least with my credit union) doesn't seem to work properly, so I re-disabled "Suggestions from sponsors" in Firefox and went on with my day. Seriously, changing…

You can just disable the anti-fingerprinting features in LibreWolf and it'll work fine with online banking and stuff if you just want de-cluttered Firefox.

Re: LibreWolf – Custom version of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom

#20

Post by Liquix »

Nextgrid wrote: post #4

There are many valid counterpoints on why you shouldn't trust/use this, but the mere existence of it raises a very valid point and calls Mozilla's BS; why does this fork exist at all if Mozilla supposedly cares about your privacy, security and freedom?

The lion's share of Mozilla's funding comes directly from Google [0]. The official reason is to feature G search as the default in Firefox, but it also conveniently keeps alive the only browser preventing antitrust action against chromium. They may want to care about freedom - or have cared at some point in the past - but at the end of the day they're beholden to Google in order to survive

[0] https://www.pcmag.com/news/mozilla-signs-lucrative-3-year-go...

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