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Epic, The Privacy Browser

epicbrowser.com

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Re: Epic, The Privacy Browser

#81

Post by sergiotapia »

metastart wrote: post #38
hngiszmo wrote: post #28

WTF??? Guys, wake up! If it is not open source, it does not protect your privacy. Period. We see how other companies got coerced into breaking privacy for some dollars. The company-driven closed source development is flawed as long as we grant governments this power. What we need is not yet another startup that tries to make money on our private data (yeah, read Epic's FAQ how they make money). We need a stack of har…

Epic is open source...anyone who wants our source code, just write us!! Sorry we've been struggling to get the product ready and hadn't prepared to release all the code yet but will do it fast. Chromium is a huge code base & we're a small team so we hadn't gotten to it yet. We don't make any money from anyone's private data or any data (period). We make revenues at this point exclusively from searches you do via our…

Just plop whatever you have in it's current state on Github. _Any_ code is better than no code. No one will use this unless it's open sourced.

Re: Epic, The Privacy Browser

#83

Post by Karunamon »

aiiane wrote: post #79
Karunamon wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the fact that such a vulnerability exists reason enough to not allow it to happen? I mean, at that point, you're basically trusting the Bad Guys to not do bad things. Look at internet security circa late 1990's to get an idea of how that works.

Nitroglycerin can be used to make things blow up. It can also be used to help prevent heart attacks. Should we completely ban nitroglycerin simply because it can be used to blow things up? I mean, we're basically trusting people to not use it to blow things up.

False equivalence. Explosive quantities of nitroglycerin are regulated.

Actually, wait a sec. So is government snooping of communications, the problem is they're not following the existing regulations.

Re: Epic, The Privacy Browser

#84

Post by hannibal5 »

kllrnohj wrote: post #54
hannibal5 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it it gives companies advantage over you. For example banks and insurance companies want to know everything possible about you. So do potential employers. Profiling people and putting them into categories and calculating their risk profiles makes their position weaker. For example: Google "lump in the testicles" and browse medical sites. Then wait one week and try to get mortgage or insurance.

Except companies like Mozilla and Google (even Microsoft) don't give that data to those companies, and have no incentive to do so. Indeed, to a company like Google that would be corporate suicide as it would undermine their main source of revenue. Google's money comes from being a middle man, they want to keep their competitive advantage (your data to target ads) secret more than you do. So your scenario doesn't exis…

But when you visit sites that google searches take you, they are full of trackers.

Re: Epic, The Privacy Browser

#86

Post by alan_cx »

nrivadeneira wrote: post #11

I still can't figure out why my browsing data being sold is objectively a bad thing. I don't see how it makes my day-to-day worse in any way. There are plenty of smart people who feel that it's bad, so maybe I'm just missing something, and I'm open to sound logic that convinces me that it's going to make my life worse. Also, the example they make at the bottom asking the reader to imagine hundreds of people following…

1) You data has value and it belongs to you. If it is taken with out permission, that is stealing. Bad thing.

2) Taking one cent from your back account every day wont make your day to day life worse. Day to day being worse is not a standard that is useful.

Re: Epic, The Privacy Browser

#87

Post by jbigelow76 »

hannibal5 wrote: post #50
nrivadeneira wrote: post #11

I still can't figure out why my browsing data being sold is objectively a bad thing. I don't see how it makes my day-to-day worse in any way. There are plenty of smart people who feel that it's bad, so maybe I'm just missing something, and I'm open to sound logic that convinces me that it's going to make my life worse. Also, the example they make at the bottom asking the reader to imagine hundreds of people following…

Because it it gives companies advantage over you. For example banks and insurance companies want to know everything possible about you. So do potential employers. Profiling people and putting them into categories and calculating their risk profiles makes their position weaker. For example: Google "lump in the testicles" and browse medical sites. Then wait one week and try to get mortgage or insurance.

    >For example: Google "lump in the testicles" and browse medical sites. Then wait one week and try to get mortgage or insurance.
I'm calling bullshit on this one unless you can provide a concrete example.

Re: Epic, The Privacy Browser

#88

Post by christiangenco »

mahyarm wrote: post #62
metastart wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source Code coming soon. We've made changes to many chromium files & we're a small team, so haven't had a chance to open source it all in a manageable way. In the meantime, don't hesitate to write us if you want to see any code or know any changes we've made. Or use Wireshark to see requests going in/out! Our philosophy is exactly that -- we don't want you to "trust" us, it should be private by design -- that's how E…

You guys are using something like git right? You have a tag for the build you created right? Why not just release a read only github account or tarball of the source released with epic to give people audit peace of mind now. Add a bunch of disclaimers saying 'we are not ready yet, please only use this to audit for now, we'll have a proper open sourcing setup soon'.

I can sense your suspicion, but I wouldn't overthink it just yet. I'd imagine there's profanity or something in the git history that needs to be cleaned up before publishing.

That said, I completely agree - before believing this browser to be completely secure, I need to see the source and be able to compile it myself.

...not that I'd necessarily personally do that, but I'd like to know that people have.

Re: Epic, The Privacy Browser

#89

Post by Zuider »

nrivadeneira wrote: post #73
ihsw wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about control and regaining control of your browsing habits, namely giving users the capability of opting out of global surveillance networks. Many advertisers screamed (and are still screaming) bloody murder over Do Not Track settings being on by default, and this is a message to send to them: your screams are irrelevant and you have no right to track me.

I have control of my browsing habits. That's my point - I'm not terribly worried about if companies see what I do, so it doesn't change my behavior. Thus, I don't see how this point shows that tracking makes my life worse.

>I'm not terribly worried about if companies see what I do, so it doesn't change my behavior.

It sounds like you are saying: "I'm not doing anything wrong, so why do I need any privacy".

Re: Epic, The Privacy Browser

#90

Post by millstone »

jbigelow76 wrote: post #87
hannibal5 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it it gives companies advantage over you. For example banks and insurance companies want to know everything possible about you. So do potential employers. Profiling people and putting them into categories and calculating their risk profiles makes their position weaker. For example: Google "lump in the testicles" and browse medical sites. Then wait one week and try to get mortgage or insurance.

>For example: Google "lump in the testicles" and browse medical sites. Then wait one week and try to get mortgage or insurance. I'm calling bullshit on this one unless you can provide a concrete example.

Courtesy of http://donttrack.us:

"Life insurers are testing an intensely personal new use for the vast dossiers of data being amassed about Americans: predicting people's longevity.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870464860457562...

It was just a pilot test, but that was three years ago, so who knows where is now.

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