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In 2024, please switch to Firefox

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Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#171

Post by VancouverMan »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #24

>1. Privacy Firefox is the only major browser not built by a company that makes money from advertising and/or selling your personal data. Mozilla tracks and gives (sells?) unique information about every download to Google unless you choose to grab it from the FTP servers. https://www.ghacks.net/2022/03/17/each-firefox-download-has-...

Any Firefox user who is concerned about privacy should definitely read the Firefox Privacy Notice:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/

The name "Google" appears multiple times, sometimes within the phrase "data to Google".

There are also currently references to "third-party ad platform" and "a third-party referral platform", along with other companies/organizations.

Some people will claim that it doesn't matter because some of this Firefox functionality that involves data collection and/or third-parties can be disabled, or that it's fine because it has been disclosed, or it's somehow acceptable because Firefox maybe doesn't send as much info as some of its competitors do, and so on.

I don't buy into those arguments. If Firefox was truly privacy-respecting, it would never collect nor send any data beyond that necessary to provide its core web browsing functionality.

Any functionality that might compromise a user's privacy should not be bundled by default, and would have to be explicitly opted into by manually installing an extension that provides such functionality. This would include Firefox's/Mozilla's own "telemetry".

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#173

Post by alargemoose »

bloopernova wrote: post #67

From yesterday's Firefox thread: Firefox has multiple compelling reasons to use it: Sync[1] only what you allow, bookmarks/history/extensions/etc Containers keep sites separated nicely[2] Tree Style Tabs[3] uBlock Origin on Android[4] Open Source since 1998! Not based on Chromium [1] Be wary of sync on a fresh Linux install, it might sync the default bookmarks and merge them with your own. Not a huge deal but definit…

Container tabs really is the killer app for me. At work I might need to be signed in and accessing multiple Microsoft 365 admin portals across tenants. Or at home, being able to have containers for my homelab/dev Microsoft 365 account that can run entirely separately of my main browser profile.

Like you said, you can use multiple browser profiles in chromeium based browsers, but managing multiple whole windows when I just need 1 browser page seems like such a pain in comparison.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#174

Post by pprotas »

JonathanBeuys wrote: post #99
pprotas wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You save passwords in plain text (bookmarks) and then complain that people can read the plain text over your shoulder?

Yes. The auth part should not be displayed when you hover over a bookmark. Chromium does not display it. In the end, every security mechanism is "plain text". Even ssh keys. When someone gains access to your ssh key, which is just an ascii string, they can log in as you.

My SSH keys are protected with a password, on top of that I have a biometric lock (MacBook fingerprint reader) on my SSH keys. So they would only grant access to someone that 1. has access to my computer, 2. knows the password (which only I know) and 3. has my finger. Definitely more than just plain text!

I strongly suggest looking into multi-factor authentication, or other modern authorization/security mechanisms if you want to see examples of security systems that are not just plain text.

> Chromium does not display it.

Security by obscurity is not ideal, although I can understand that the lack of this feature in Firefox hinders your usecase.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#175

Post by pmontra »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #59
jcalvinowens wrote: post #5

I switched back to firefox last year and haven't looked back. I still use chrome on another laptop sometimes, the performance difference from my human perspective is literally zero. These days, it's much more common for me to encounter a website that works in firefox but not chrome than the other way around. I actually switched for good when I had to use firefox to file my taxes, because the IRS free self-file site w…

The only site I've found behaves terribly in Firefox is LinkedIn. Weird pauses on page load that lock the whole browser (not just the tab) for like 5-10 seconds. No idea what they're doing to make this happen, but it's odd. Which is, well, fine, because LinkedIn is mostly a dumpster anyways.

This prompted me to check LinkedIn after months of having it parked in a tab and it worked with no problems.

When I have problems with a site it's usually because I'm blocking most JavaScript with uMatrix and I have to find the correct combination of scripts to make the site work for me without having to give away my soul to the gods of tracking.

As a software developer, it's been years since a customer told me that the sites I develop on Firefox don't work on Chrome or Safari. I don't even bother to check anymore. I couldn't check with Safari anyway and they are OK with that. The point is that if it works in Firefox it works everywhere. Of course we're not using any Chrome-only API but we never had to use one of them as far as I can remember.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#176

Post by culi »

closewith wrote: post #134
krastanov wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox out of the box indeed does not cause broken websites. However, the demographic of this forum probably will use Firefox with "Multi-Account Containers", "Temporary Containers", "uBlock Origin", and a few more. These are amazing for privacy and productivity, but will occasionally cause broken websites. Source: I am a Firefox-first user who occasionally uses plugin-less Chrome because the aforementioned plugins…

Nah, there's plenty of examples of sites breaking on Firefox. For example, the recent degraded performance on Youtube linked to Firefox User Agent strings.

Yeah but that's not on Mozilla in any way. That's just Google's anti-competitive practices. Firefox refuses to jump on Google's attempts to ban adblockers with Manifest V3 so Google wants to punish them

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#177

Post by daft_pink »

I think 2024 is going to be ruled by the Arc Browser when it is fully released for Windows.

I use it on Mac and it's amazing, but as soon as it's available on Windows, I think people will start recommending it everywhere and everyone is going to start using it.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#178

Post by iso8859-1 »

markx2 wrote: post #98
ausbah wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you have any other recs for firefox extensions?

Archive Page Bypass Paywalls Clean CSS Exfil Protection Decentraleyes DDG Privacy Essentials Ghostery NoScript Privacy Badger Privacy-Oriented Origin Policy Stylus Tampermonkey uBlock Origin uMatrix Yes, there is overkill in there but that's fine. It does not impact my browsing experience.

So when you want to enable JavaScript, you have to click around in both uMatrix and NoScript?

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#180

Post by madebylaw »

cle wrote: post #93
sgt wrote: post #7

> Firefox is the only major browser not built by a company that makes money from advertising and/or selling your personal data This is true for Google, etc, but definitely not for Apple. Not saying Apple is perfect in every way, but they actually have a track record for privacy protection.

Apple definitely makes a lot of money from advertising...probably more than they make from selling Macs (based on 2022 results). Also I think this quote might be technically right, but Mozilla's revenue is almost entirely paid from advertising companies who pay royalties to have their search engines by default in Firefox. So they are very much coupled to the dynamics of the ads industry.

Apple makes money from ads in their App Store. Do they make ad money from Safari? I couldn’t find that info.
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