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Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

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Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It continues to surprise me that people use the home screen, regardless of it being Firefox or Chrome. New window, new tab, I always set that to a blank page, in my mind that should be the default.

It continues to surprise me that people don't make their "new tab page" useful, it's probably the page you see the most everyday. Make it your own, put your bookmarks in there or whatever is useful (I use https://start.me/ )

For me, a new window or new tab is something that's only active for time it takes me to type in the URL of the site I'm going to. At least earlier having content on that page slowed down Firefox, which is annoying if you just want to go straight to entering a new URL. So setting it to about:blank was a major workflow improvement.

There's no point to the "new tab page", it would be better to have a popup to type the URL into and then hit "Go" and have that open a new tab. For me it's really just a distraction. Why would I open a new window/tab if I didn't know where I'm going?

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#552
post #343
post #298

I really, really want to switch from Vivaldi to Firefox, but I am just too accustomed to the workflow. The interface is too slick and it "just works". I use vertical tabs with different workspaces, and although I am aware I can do it with extensions or userchrome in Firefox, I've found both variants pretty rough and unpolished -- and I don't have the time and energy to polish stuff that bothers me. The biggest questi…

I've used Tree Style Tab before and switched to Sidebery ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sidebery/ ). Never used Vivaldi, but you might want to give that a try. It works well in combination with container tabs.

Hmm, looks like that was what I was looking for. I'll check it out, thanks for recommendation.

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#553
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Firefox has always been the most versatile and secure way to browse the web. Currently, a Chrome full-chain is notably harder than a Firefox full-chain, with the former being at "state actor ITW" level, and the latter being at "your friends started a never-heard of consultancy and they decided to do the classical trick - pwning Firefox at Pwn2Own" level.

Yeah but if Google keeps removing the ability to block content then Firefox will be more secure simply by filtering dynamic content from unknown domains. Drive by attacks are the most common way to spread malware, this is exactly what extensions like noscript prevent. This isn't the first time Chrome has crippled user ability to filter content on a deep level. So it doesn't matter how much hardening Chrome has if it…

Sure, I just hope people move to contribute hardening features to Firefox, and the first step would be singing out loud that Firefox is not the most secure browser right now.

Oh, and I suffer from using NoScript (currently on Chrome, unfortunately) every day, I very much want to have a secure enough browser to not giving me decisions like "do you want to whitelist cdn.jsdelivr.com [1] or click four times for each page you read".

[1] It distributes arbitrary shit on github, so good luck whitelisting this "known" domain.

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm. It actually was. One of the major reasons the UK left the EU is because it would turn the UK into the financial center that it once was not having to deal with all these pesky EU regulations on financial markets. Small detail: it was the EU acting on behalf of the US that was the foundation for a lot of these regulations (mostly the fall out of a couple of really bad episodes) and Switzerland, one of the few hold…

> One of the major reasons the UK left the EU is because it would turn the UK into the financial center that it once was not having to deal with all these pesky EU regulations on financial markets. Eh, yes and no. A lot of the financial backing given to pro-Brexit politicians was from rich City types hoping to be deregulated, it's true. But London, the financial centre, had some of the lowest support for Brexit (outs…

What matters is not where the voters where, but where the money came from.

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#555

I keep seeing Edge mentioned as a worthy alternative, and I just don't get it. First, all Chromium-based browsers will eventually block uBlock Origin for the sole reason that they can't maintain Manifest v2 on their own, and they all rely on Chrome's Web Store anyway. This won't happen immediately because Manifest v2 will probably stick around for longer because of enterprise users, but the writing is on the wall. Th…

> First, all Chromium-based browsers will eventually block uBlock Origin for the sole reason that they can't maintain Manifest v2 on their own

I haven't found a need for uBlock Origin with Brave's built-in ad blocking. And the effective ad blocking is really the main reason I use Brave. I just disable all the token / wallet nonsense.

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#557

I keep seeing Edge mentioned as a worthy alternative, and I just don't get it. First, all Chromium-based browsers will eventually block uBlock Origin for the sole reason that they can't maintain Manifest v2 on their own, and they all rely on Chrome's Web Store anyway. This won't happen immediately because Manifest v2 will probably stick around for longer because of enterprise users, but the writing is on the wall. Th…

Vivaldi is great, am going to stick to it untill I am forced to move to firefox.

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does the US government have to do with anything :/ I am a pro EU person but I feel you are being quite dismissive of an important issue. Namely that understanding the EU governing structure is very impenetrable to a great number of people, much more so than their national government. The foundation of democracy is that citizens distribute power. How does democracy work if citizens have very little idea about how…

> Namely that understanding the EU governing structure is very impenetrable to a great number of people, much more so than their national government. You can say a lot about the EU that needs fixing but their documentation is excellent . What it needs is for the national governments to get better at communicating how and when they interact with the EU and what the practical effects are. The bigger problem is that ant…

> they somehow believe that as smaller countries in a much larger world that they would be able to do better than as a bloc

Yeah colonies too would have been economically much better off today had they not experimented with national liberation, but thats not how people think. They dont want to be paying taxes to a place they see as foreign. Nor do they want foreigners telling them how to do things. You are aware we are talking about old Europe here, and not Canada, Australia, or the US? The one that fought two world wars with itself in just over a 100 years. Not to even mention the other 2000 years of its long and very bloody history. I am very happy that the EU exists, but for Europe slow and steady wins the race. Centralization is not the answer because then countries with smaller populations get dominated by bigger countries.

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#559
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What amazes me is how quick they transitioned to Google Chrome when it released. This was around 2009. The power of endless money for advertising. Some users think it doesn't have that much impact, but being nudged on every other web page to make the switch is much more powerful than that nephew who talks to you about it once.

There is even more powerful marketing tool - preinstalling software. If you can pay to PC or phone makers to have your software preinstalled, then it is difficult to compete with you. It is the most reliable method of marketing.

Not even preinstalled. In the early days of Chrome, Google paid to have Chrome automatically installed--and not merely automatically installed, but automatically set as your default browser without your consent--alongside the updaters for popular software like Flash and the Java runtime. This is how Chrome infected my machine for the first time. Endlessly scummy, and I resolved then and there to never use Chrome.

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#560
post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With such a privacy-first config, might be easier to use librewolf as a base instead of plain firefox.

Or https://mullvad.net/en/browser

Librewolf is debranded Firefox to remove all the sponsored crap that Firefox inserted: Pocket, Hello, new tab recommendations, default google search, etc.

Mullvad browser exists to advertise a VPN.

I would not recommend the latter in lieu of the former.

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