Goodbye Chrome. It was great while it lasted.
from cyborganism@lemmy.ca to privacy@lemmy.ca on 25 Oct 2023 03:10
https://lemmy.ca/post/7914540
from cyborganism@lemmy.ca to privacy@lemmy.ca on 25 Oct 2023 03:10
https://lemmy.ca/post/7914540
I’m fucking done with Chrome. Fuck this.
#privacy
threaded - newest
The “No thanks” button should probably say “Fuck this”
You can say ‘Fuck this’ and switch to Firefox or LibreWolf (fork of Firefox with privacy improvements and preinstalled uBlock Origin, it also removes all the crap from Firefox like Pocket or Sponsored sites). Mull on Android is another great Fork of Firefox with improved privacy.
I already know this.
Oh yes I want more choice over the ads I see! /s
me too! i want to set it to "none, ever, fuck you"
That’s what uBlock Origin is for! NextDNS also helps with blocking ads on your entire network! Alternatively you can self-host Pi-Hole or AdGuard Home.
Was it ever fun?
No
Definitely! I remember how awesome and exciting it was when Google was handing out all this great free stuff, before we learnt how we were paying for it.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
It was! When Chrome first came out it was blazing fast and could render pages better than any other browser. It wasn’t this spyware that sent all your web usage for targeted ads.
This was the intention of Chrome from the start. A browser made by an advertising company was never a good thing.
We need an Internet reset.
Gemini is having a go at it.
That looks really cool. What would incentivise companies to use it over a regular website with tracking and whatnot?
Absolutely nothing.
Unfortunately this.
Not only would companies not want to use it because of no incentives like what they get from the internet with monetary gains, it'll likely only exist as an incredibly niche thing because not many people will hear about it due to the first part.
That said, maybe that's the best part of the whole thing. With less things to exploit, it wards off companies and "influencers" just using it to make money and it becomes more focused around hobbies like the internet once was.
That sounds amazing!
That’s incredibly snob from you… and I agree with you.
Sounds like they need some ads! :)
a protocol for the distribution of arbitrary files, like http. A hypertext format, which http was intended for. Using mature technologies such as a bunch of stuff that http already uses.
This is just http with extra steps. The problem is not in how the data is sent, but what data is sent. This is the equivalent of noticing people sending a lot of hate mail via snail mail, and the “solution” to that being to use square envelopes instead.
we need a company-free web. today you search the web for anything and you only obtain garbage SEO optimized results because of the commercialization of the web.
“What would incentivise companies to use it over a regular website with tracking and whatnot?”
Nothing…and that’s kinda the point.
Really pulling for Solid.
You guys see ads?
Yeah, sometimes. Archive.org has a nice collection of vintage ones.
Now I do, thanks to YouTube.
Firefox + ublock origin solves that
FreeTube has been very nice to me.
I tried invidious and it’s great but my issue with it is I can’t see my subscriptions, see which videos I’ve already watched or leave likes on videos :/
FreeTube has good instructions for how to export your existing subscriptions from YouTube and then import those into FreeTube. Those go into the default "All Channels" profile. From there, you can make more profiles, and add subscriptions into those. I have several now: News, Academia, Bushcraft, Motoring, more. Switching between them is seamless, you don't lose your place.
There is a History you can go to, although it appears to only show history for "All Channels" (does not filter based on profile subscriptions used above). There is a settings toggle for "Hide Videos on Watch."
That's true, you can't leave likes on or comment on videos (though you can view comments). I'm in the "oh fucking well" camp on that.
but freetube is an application right? I’d rather watch videos in my browser
... Okay? I guess?
I mean, a browser is an application, too. Add the Privacy Redirect extension to your browser, and it'll open all YouTube links in FreeTube, so it's really pretty seamless.
I'm not sure what's got me promoting FreeTube so much right now. I just started using it less than a week ago. The learning curve is quite shallow, and since I only watch videos on my desktop (not on my shitty shitty phone), I don't have to be concerned with my history and subscriptions being synced anywhere.
yeah a browser is an application but this requires me to install yet another application and idk it feels weird to install an application just for watching YouTube… I’m just hoping there’s other alternatives like invidious that are available on a browser
Try Piped
will do thx
The fact that they want you to do this again every 4 weeks is downright laughable.
It will be more often than that. The ad topics will be generated in a rolling fashion so expirations will be staggered.
It says that they’re auto deleted, there’s no action needed every 4 week by the user.
The fact that anyone in /privacy/ uses any google products or services is also quite laughable.
Nice gatekeeping bro, keep it up
I don’t think that word means what you think it means
What does it mean then, if not implying that you’re not a real Privacy user or cannot be interested in improving your privacy situation if you use Google products?
I honestly, i think it's the truth. You can't be a privacy enthusiast if you use google products. It's the antithesis of privacy.
What about someone who has been slowly degoogling themselves but isn’t all the way there yet?
On that note, any suggestions for a privacy-friendlier alternative for my favorite but most difficult-to-replace Google service, location history?
I think mosquito does location history. But it's usually self hosted.
That’s like worrying about privacy while using Facebook and tiktok. Moreover, accessing all of your personal information on a device created by Facebook.
I mean, you’ve got to start somewhere.
So what happens if you just block every ad topic?
I guess you just don’t see personalised ads
Oh no!
Oh even if you have it on it will try Shapiroing you, or slip in some crying Peterson. It really takes some time if you try to tame it. I think I’m in some zone where they just quit on me. But then I’ve never in my life clicked on anything recommended.
It was never great. The only use for chrome was to load the two or three sites that would only load in chrome and then ignore it.
With both Chrome and Edge enshittifying themselves, nows a great time for Apple to ship Safari for Windows again.
What for? Firefox is faster than Chrome these days.
Oh please no, Safari is… weird. It’s the new IE for front-end developers.
“Hey Safari, here’s the response from an API call.”
Safari: Oh, you didn’t specify how to cache this. I guess I’ll just cache it… forever!
Fire that fox up! Mozilla Firefox
Try its forks: LibreWolf (desktop) and Iceraven (Android)
Mull is another option for Android.
Or Fennec.
Nope. I hate saying the name.
Waterfox as well!
Using Mull right now and Librewolf for PC. Never browsed so good before.
Better late than never I guess.
You’re in the wrong if you still have chrome installed.
Use Firefox now!
I am! I’ve been using it for a while now. I just accidentally started Chrome today and this popup came up. I decided to uninstall it for good.
Never stopped.
Calling it rn, if it doesn’t have this shit Microsoft Edge will become super popular amongst the general public once they learn that Edge is like Chrome but without this ad stuff
The general public don’t really care about this ad stuff
The general public uses Edge already.
No, the whole operating system spies on you instead.
Wow, this comment section is a giant echo chamber. Really, guys?
Yes, Google and Chrome are dumpster fires for privacy. But this is at least inching in the right direction, however small. Now the next time you shop for a present for your girlfriend on Valentine’s Day, you can prevent yourself from getting underwear ads for the next month.
Also, if this is your last straw… you’ve had your head in the sand for over a decade. Google has been watching every single thing you do, categorizing it, and selling ad placement for that topic to the highest bidder ever since ads became their primary business model. Chrome just made it easier to do that.
I ditched Chrome a short while ago due to its poor memory management and its inexplicable inability to handle certain sites that Edge can somehow handle fine for a third of the RAM hit. This wouldn’t have been my deal breaker.
I have 4 different browsers installed, I use Chrome for work activities, as it supports the Outlook and Teams PWA’s and I’m not browsing ad-ridden sites. I use qutebrowser for personal stuff/bookmarks, and Firefox for uh, video browsing.
I’d recommend using Edge for work. The Office integrations are impressive and make work that much more streamlined.
On linux? No thanks.
No it’s not. Where is the “opt out, don’t track me” option? This isn’t any better. This is a just asking how you would like your toppings on your shit sandwich. They don’t give a fuck about us or you.
What? Before, for many, many years, they didn’t even ask how you would like your toppings on your shit sandwich and you happily gobbled it up. They’re giving you the option to opt out of some topics, and NOW you’re pissed? It may not be a privacy slam-dunk (why are you using Chrome, anyway?), but it’s better than the nothing that existed before.
Of course Google doesn’t care. They’re not going to give you an opt-out option. They’re an ad company, and their whole business is knowing your interests to get you to buy from advertisers. The search engine is just to get you in the door. The moment you press enter, they’re selling you something.
They started off as a search engine with the motto “don’t be evil”. Let’s get our facts straight before you try to talk me down like I don’t know anything.
Fuck their ads and fuck whatever this monster is. I opt out by making sure my security settings are so high most pages won’t load until I manually configure what I allow. Everyone has the option to do this but it’s a massive pain in the ass so I get it. It doesn’t mean we all need to passively accept getting fucked.
Google was selling ads about 4 years before their IPO when the “Don’t Be Evil” motto was first revealed to the public. There is a “History of Google” page on Wikipedia if you want to brush up on the facts and timeline.
The fact remains that they’re now an advertising company. This was their monetization model and how they’ve amassed 90%+ of their wealth.
You can fiddle with your security however you want. I settle for “good enough” with things that aren’t Chrome, because my time isn’t worth analyzing each individual cookie on a page to get the info I am looking for. Firefox and uBlock Origin are a good enough layer of protection.
That doesn't make them an advertising company. It was a search engine that sold ads to gain monetization. However at this point we are just splitting hairs over perspective so I'll bury the hatchet there.
I can and I do encourage EVERYONE to fiddle with their security, not just because of Google but because eventually you're going to stumble into some shitty website by accident and that fucker is going to pop you with a some random JavaScript that you already told your browser is totally fine to run automatically.
There is way more at stake here than a couple of tracking cookies, but it starts there. They need the permission to read, track and modify files on your machine in order to "sell" you the best advertisements. This means always having JavaScript turned on as well as allowing permissions which often are automatically accepted. This opens people up to a massive security risk with no reward. Google gets to walk away smiling while you're scraping viruses and malware off your machines left and right.They aren't here to educate or give you a choice, they just send you along after you pass GO and they get to collect the $200.
I'm sorry but no, it's not okay to try to convince the public this is a good thing. I'd wager Google spent a pretty penny trying to figure out a way to get people like you to agree that isn't so terrible when it's so obvious what they are doing is absolutely unacceptable.
Nothing about that is in defence of Google.
Attacking ignorance isn’t the same as defending evil.
This is one of those situations where people are mad at the right person for the wrong reasons and I never know how to respond. I hate misinformation, so I lean towards wanting to try and point out what’s wrong, but long-form nuanced explanations don’t fit well with the situation and will change zero minds so why bother? At least there’s some people switching to Firefox as a result, I guess.
Firefox has always been my main browser but I don’t get OP’s point.
Isn’t this a good feature because it allows personalized ads without tracking?
Can someone explain to me?
The point, in my opinion is that software on my machine designed to run webpages shouldn’t be trying to initiate a conversation to convince me why tracking is a good thing and offering a false choice of options. Funny, no opt out button eh?
Don’t worry. I brought my own.
According to this popup, Chrome is essentially sending my entire browsing history god knows where in order to build a user profile that is then used by advertising companies to display targeted ads on the websites I visit. But it allows me to control which topics get shown or hidden and somehow that is a “privacy” feature.
I just don’t want my browsing history to be used for anything except finding what pages I visited in the past and that’s it. I’m sick of being tracked and having my whole god damn digital life being shared to fucking greedy corporations who want to send me ads to buy crap I don’t need.
the user profile is stored locally, websites get a random list of three topics
According to Steve Gibson’s podcast, the analysis of your browsing history that converts it into topics is done in your browser, so presumably on your computer, not by sending the browsing history to a server. Only the resulting topics are shared with Google’s servers.
Ok. Still. Why is my browser using memory and spending cpu cycles on this shit?
“To stop everyone else from stealing your data, let us steal it for them!”
It’s like trying to stop a fire by committing arson.
I get the point you’re trying to make, but we regularly actually start fires to prevent fires.
🤣🤣🤣 beat me to it, like almost literally verbatim what I was going to say.
That’s true. Maybe I should’ve picked my analogy better lol.
Big reason why analogies are fallacies: they’re never a 1:1 representation of the subject and hand and usually serve to derail the conversation by making people debate the merits of the analogy.
A forest fire can’t burn the leaves you already burned a few months ago.
Bonus points for doing that as the single largest advertisement company in the world.
Most of what Google is mentioning here is not new. They’re still tracking you, and still learning about you and what you do on the Internet. They don’t sell your browsing history or identity to advertisers, and as far as I’m aware, they never have; that’s their golden goose. What they sell is access to a certain type of users based on what they’ve learned about you from your browsing history. For many, many years, users didn’t have a choice. They’d be served ads for things that might be wildly irrelevant based on one errant search, or when shopping for a niche gift for a friend.
The difference now is that they’re opening up topics to users. It’s win-win-win: Users don’t see irrelevant ads, Google doesn’t serve up ads that users won’t click (thus driving down the value), and advertisers pay less for useless impressions and are more likely to reach users interested in their products.
Make no mistake… Google isn’t doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. It only makes their ad-based business model more efficient and valuable.
If the word “ads” makes you turn red as your blood boils like most of Lemmy, I can’t help you. But if it weren’t for ads, we’d still be paying for Netscape.
Wow.
It’s not win win win
If I see “relevant ads”, i.e. products I buy because I saw an ad for it, I lose. I lose money. I wouldn’t have bought it without the ad. The ad created a need in my brain that I want to fulfill. Without the ad I wouldn’t have had it.
No, I do not win with relevant ads. I win with irrelevant ads. I don’t care about those and don’t look at them and waste my time and money.
Hmm. You only buy things you don’t need because of ads? You only lose money and get nothing in return, every time? That’s a shame.
Sad you don’t understand how ads work
Eh. Perhaps you’re right. I just know that on a personal level, I have purchased goods and services learned about through ads over time that have enhanced my life and allowed me to have meaningful experiences and create memories with the people I care about I wouldn’t have otherwise had. Perhaps I’m naive, but it seems awfully silly and shortsighted looking back to have missed out in exchange for a knee-jerk angry reaction to anyone trying to sell me something.
There are actually such things as relevant ads. One of the paper magazines I used to subscribe to was “Small Craft Advisor”. In addition to the articles and editorial content, there were articles written by vendors about their products and traditional ads. Literally everything in that magazine was aimed at small boat owners and builders. No BMWs, no Rolexes, no shaving products, just very specific content and ads for those passionate about small boats.
When they switched to online only, enough subscribers reached out to them regarding the loss of vendor articles and ads that they now occasionally put out something to address that loss.
I don’t know where else I could learn about a new epoxy product or a new boat design so easily.
I’d love to see content related ads
We used to get at least some of them before the advertisers conned themselves (with the help of Google et al) into thinking that they had to know who we are instead of what our active interests are.
SPOTTED THE CHROME DEVELOPER
There’s still tracking. They’re just streamlining the process and making it sound “extra private”.
Personally, I find the entire concept of personalized ads offensive. Tell me that advertising pays for content and I’ll punch a kitten.
LOL that is just what they want you to think.
My understanding is that it uses your browser history to profile you, then when you visit a website with ads it sends your profile to Google Ads service so they can decide what kind of ads it shows you.
So your browser history supposedly doesn’t leave your browser, but also it doesn’t need to because they get the information they want regardless. They’re just changing where the processing happens.
Have to use chrome at work and it’s just such a shitty browser experience. Don’t understand why anyone would use it unless they actually use Google for work.
I deleted Chrome a couple of months ago. Haven’t missed it in the slightest.
Jokes on you Google, but I dont want to see ANY ads…
Hey you’re in luck! For just $99.99/mo* we’ll remove those ads.
But we’ll still collect way more data than you think and in a couple months we’ll raise the price for the True Unlimited* plan
**True Unlimited plan has like, so many ads, because fuck you.
Why does this sound an awful lot like what Microsoft is doing to windows? 🤔🤔
But how will the already-profitable company make more profit at your expense?
Looking at the image colours… was the last one red, but someone said that’s too aggressive? Looks strange
Advertising is going to blow up like real estate.
Imagine if Firefox implemented this and we don’t have any other browser to use without ads.
<img alt="" src="https://skibalaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Freak-Out.jpg">
Yea too much work mate and what if you have to unblock a domain out of million domains in the host file. Fk that
How can I hide these images?
They are getting very obnoxious.
block everyone who uses them, just takes a second
Yeah, but I’d like the images to be hidden by default.
It’s a pretty simple concept, lol.
Maybe try a different instance? I'm on kbin and all I see by default is a url to the image.
Agreed
You’ll have to block the user. Unfortunately thats the only way
Dang. It would be nice if there was a setting to hide images by default, lol.
How long do you think it would take for a new browser to emerge that doesn’t block ad blockers?
Looking at the modding community, about 24 hours max
Even shittier when it got silently pushed through an update and was turned on by default without asking for prior permission.
Firefox is for people with big cocks
And girls too.
And girls with big cocks.
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.ca/pictrs/image/fea45366-50a0-49eb-a0f4-d0aa6634526c.gif">
Sup
Girls are people too!
But i am nyot person but cat girl nyaaaa
I can say with great confidence that people with small members also use it.
Females do not apply. Got it
I haven’t seen this on my PC for Google chrome, and I use Unlock origin
There is a lot of misinformation being shared in this thread.
A good excerpt from Steve Gibson covering Topics on SecurityNow #935
…
…
SecurityNow #935 transcript
Max that’s a wonderful comment, but could you just tell me what to do, I ain’t reading all that.
Right? “Here is a quick excerpt”. Then proceeds to post a whole article.
Within the context of the subject matter, that was a quick excerpt. And, in fact, the transcript from which that excerpt was extracted can probably be considered a relatively quick excerpt from the entire system.
Sometimes it is just not possible to simplify further or be more concise without just saying “trust me, it’s better than what we had up to now.” That is especially true when we have all learned, I hope, that “trust me, I saw it on the internet” is a really lousy way to make decisions.
Damn bro, my bad. I must have been cranky when I left that comment. Totally understood!
No problem! If that’s as nasty as we ever get, then I’d say we’re doing pretty damn good!
TL;DR: If you want to use Chrome then don’t be worried about Topics. It’s better privacy than third party cookies and other tracking methods.
You should really practice reading more if something that long is difficult for you.
Reading is a crucial life skill that everyone should practice daily.
Stop using Chrome either way. Topics are still tracking, just a different kind.
tl;dr There are valid reasons to not use Chrome, and to be suspicious of Google. This, specifically, is not one of them and the fear is mostly overblown by people who have done zero research.
It seems unlikely, though, that advertisers will give up on the nuanced tracking they can get by other means, right? Whether to show you the $2 rip off umbrella that works for a single rainy day, or the $52 Proposal Pink ™ ultra-certified umbrella that keeps the rain off for a single rainy day.
They won’t be given the choice. The point is giving them some compromise in order to disable other tracking abilities from the browser. The big question with all of this isn’t whether it improves on the user’s privacy from the status quo. It’s what happens when Google effectively monopolizes most of the access to advertising data. I’m not crying for third party ad companies, I think there might be some unforseen consequences for users down the road.
But how so? Just that Google will stop feeding them personal data the ways it currently does? Or that Chrome would actively work to block fingerprinting and trackers the way and blockers and Firefox do?
Because fingerprinting happens whether the user’s browser ‘allows’ it or not.
Ok, so you mean most of what most companies get is fed from Google’s tracking? So most would lose most of their data. But not that rely on Amazon/Meta/etc who are doing their own dirty work.
I think they’ll do this.
Today everyone installs cookies and what not and tracks however they can. Once Google goes the Firefox route disabling and mitigating tracking abilities in Chrome, the only gateway to tracking data will be the data gathered by Google via Chrome and exposed via some Google-controlled API to third parties. So I think that eventually what most companies get fed by will be Google’s tracking.
Yup. And probably.
So better than the status quo, unless you’re a smaller ad company.
Yeah - this is the privacy model that ad targeting should have always taken. People are grabbing pitchforks not really knowing why.
Moving profiles to the edge and only letting ad servers know what to send rather than connecting the ads to profiles of centrally located browsing data and history would be a huge step forward in privacy for the average user.
The even better version of this would be the ad server sending “ad options” and the browser selecting what to show based on the internal profile, so even category data isn’t sent, just the potential linking of which ad is shown to which user (but not knowing if that correlated to an actual preference or if the other options were just equally poorly targeted).
No they should use context ads like duck duck go
They should ad an option to pay for the service with not tracking nor ads.
Steve is the best.
Ah yes, “hey instead of us tracking you, can you just save us the computation effort and just tell us what you’re into? We’ll still keep tracking you though.” And this is somehow a privacy FEATURE? Even though they clearly say they’ll be sharing thisvinfo with websites you visit? Boggles the mind
Exactly. It’s corporate newspeak.
Chrome stopped being good 6 to 8 years ago.
It was never good. It’s performance sucked ass and I can’t think of s single feature it had that I got anything out of.
I want my browser to do 2 things: load the fucking webpage and save bookmarks. That’s fucking it.
It was the first browser to have tabs. That simple feature was cool AF at the time, especially the “Reopen last closed tab” and “Duplicate Tab” features.
“Duplicate Tab” was awesome, letting you risk going down some sites rabbit holes without losing your starting context in the original tab.
Awesome innovative features, now natural requirements for any browser.
But it was all downhill since there.
Not true. I was definitely using tabs in Firefox and Opera before Chrome even existed. I’ve used CTRL/CMD+SHIFT+T to reopen last closed tab in all browsers for many years now so I can’t remember if that existed as a menu option for people who prefer to use a mouse, but the guts of the feature itself was there before Chrome existed as well. (I avoid duplicating tabs so I can’t say if that existed before.)
I remember clearly when Chrome came out, it felt like this stripped down skeleton with less built-in features than I was used to, less customizability, and less
featuresprivacy that promised to be “fast,” yet didn’t seem any faster than a fresh browser install would normally be. The one innovation I associate with Chrome is browser-based online and offline web apps, but I don’t know if that started with them. (I’m guessing it probably did since they were in their heyday when that got to be a thing.)I was so disappointed when Mozilla spent years trying to make Firefox more like Chrome (which meant stripping down features and customizability) to attract people-- which clearly wasn’t working-- and it’s been such a relief to see them get back to being simple on the surface but poweruser-friendly under the hood, recently.
small edit: to fix a mistake above (see strikethrough text)
I stand corrected.
But regarding tabs, according to <img alt="these guys" src="https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/which-browser-invented-tabs-3-common-myths-debunked/">…
makeuseof.com/…/which-browser-invented-tabs-3-com…
Edit: Added link
Oh absolutely! I almost included more about who created tabs myself but my comment was already becoming a wall of text and I hadn’t used InternetWorks myself. 😅
Since you bring it up, I’ve wondered for a long time if the folks who brought tabs to browsers might have also worked on TabWorks-- a very customizable (and much prettier) alternative shell/GUI for Windows 3.x.
Oh geez, thinking back to the “we had it first!” wars between Opera fans and Firefox fans about tabs back in the pre-Chrome days…
Chrome actually used to run very well compared to Firefox, much lower general RAM and CPU usage doing the same thing. That was quite a while ago though
If you ignore privacy issues, it was the best browser a long time ago, for some years after it was new. I remember those days, installing AVG every time I reinstalled Windows Vista. My first laptop, my first time with internet, Twilight Princess and Sonic '06 was out, it was great. That was back when we liked Sonic '06, because it was new and we were young and dumb. I was in the USAF doing computer technician work.
Piggybacking here to let people know that hitting “no thanks” on that dialog only disables 1 out of the 3 new tracking methods added to Chrome. Besides turning off “ad topics” you need to go to preferences and also disable “site-suggested ads” and “ad measurement”.
Opera comes with a pre-installed adblock ;)
And free spyware
privacy on the internet? never heard of her
if you actually want privacy use Tor, not any popular browser
Opera doesn’t use Tor
obviously?
if you value your privacy use the Tor browser
I use Opera. Built-in ad/tracker blocker, cookie destroyer, free vpn and much more features. All chrome extensions work with opera.
In 2016, Opera was acquired by an investment group led by a Chinese consortium. :(
Wut! Damn, can’t have anything good anymore these days… Thanks for the info. Now I’m sad.
I know… I was saddened to find this out.
The old Opera versions using the Presto engine were truly amazing. Now they’re just a Chromium skin, just like Vivaldi, Brave and others, adding more and more crap like crypto wallets and other shady stuff.
Back then they were important to keep the web’s standards high and corporations in check and compatible to each other. Big props to the original Opera.
Vivaldi is a chromium browser from the OG opera guys I believe.
Firefox it is and was for over a decade and more. Add uBlock Origin, uMatrix and some smaller stuff and the web suddenly becomes accessible.
Can you provide a list of the smaller stuff? Been meaning to switch to Firefox.
Firefox actually has most privacy stuff you need built-in nowadays. There are surprisingly few steps you need to harden it after install (on both desktop and mobile):
Optionally:
You do not need any other extension. There is some advanced stuff for fingerprinting protection but they can do more harm than good if you don’t know what you’re doing. Stick to the above, update Firefox when prompted and that’s all.
Yup, solid advices.
I would add disabling recommendations for Add-Ons and Themes and clearing the initial default bookmarks.
Of course you can pimp it out like setting config properties to enable experimental stuff like Wayland, WebRender, hardware decoding, etc. pp. before they get enabled by default in later releases.
I love the possibility to have uBlock Origin on mobile. I have Privacy Badger and Decentraleyes installed as well. Toolbar on bottom is another thing I can’t live without anymore. That’s configurable through settings.
You can use uBlock Origin on mobile in the Firefox nightly build.
In the nightly build, you get to use pretty much all addons from desktop.
Thank you!
I’ve noticed DDG giving poor results lately and definitely putting me in a bubble. No matter what it gives hyper local results.
Same, I tried it for a while a few months ago but it never gave me as good results as Google. I’m very aware of the enshittification and will switch away as soon as I notice it not showing me what I want, though.
For the record I find it miles better than google, I just think they are getting to be more like Google in their results being tailored.
When I search something I want to learn about I’ll often get local examples whereas I used to get the wiki or some general discussions.
When I google it I get ads and pictures of myself in the shower.
andisearch.com
Add-Ons I have installed are:
Thanks!
You’re welcome. I made a last-minute edit to complete the list.
Double thanks!
Thanks!!
uMatrix has been abandoned hasn’t it? I thought the dev had incorporated some of uMatrix into uBlock?
Am I wrong in believing this?
Yes, it’s true uMatrix isn’t in dev anymore and supposedly stuff has been incorporated to uBlock but I still feel more at home with uMatrix and it’s much more convenient to use and much stricter.
There was a negative vote; care to explain?
Firefox, and Vivaldi for the occasional site that doesn’t work on Gecko. (They’re built on the Chromium engine, but absolutely refusing to implement this crap)
I turned it off the first time I was asked. Something on my phone opened in Chrome, rather than Firefox, and this came up again with a different question. I was pretty sure I said no but wasn’t convinced that what I had chosen was doing what I asked. Sure enough diving into settings it was enabled.
I’ve loved Chrome for years but this is bullshit. Firefox isn’t perfect but I love that I can use uBlock Origin. Fuck Chrome.
It was never great.
How about a setting like “I don’t want to be tracked and I don’t want to see any ads” that is enabled by default?
operating systems might eventually be subscription based too… oh wait
Wait what ? we’re not there yet are we ?
apparently windows 12 is planned be a subscription, or at least have something be a subscription. this is just what ive heard tho
Fr ? It’s high time to ditch that sorry excuse of an OS 🙁
For now it’s just rumor from a developer file that said something along the line of ‘subscription_status:###’.
Can you even imagine?
Linux, the superior operating system, will never be subscription based.
Red hat shifting nervously in its seat
Technically the subscription is for the enterprise customer support, not for the software itself.
So far. Never trust a publicly traded company when they think there is money to be made.
Never trust a publicly traded company.
the only kind of based that linux wont be
Fucking true
Don’t give them any ideas.
When was the last time Google made something objectively useful and not some ad bs?
Street view is cool.
Maps, Earth, Translate, Android, Gmail, and a lot more. Unfortunately, most of these were made years ago.
Oh Maps is an ad-fest all right. Nothing like needing to read a street name or see a particular business but Google says, “Oh no, I this is what you really want to see!”
i do agree maps, earth, and translate are very good, and their open source counterparts are not nearly as good, but android is not entirely made by google, and (i believe) aosp is fully foss with no google crap. gmail is admittedly very nice to setup and use, but is pretty unremarkable, being essentially just another email provider, but free
Maps and earth are ok at best, other businesses were better but then google bought them ( cough waze cough ). Translate is meh and deepl is better. Android is okish, but only if you use stock, lineageOS or GrapheneOS with at most minimal google services. Gmail… I never use.
They were services that started out nice, but got bloated with ad and spying over the years that theyve become meh at most in my book, sadly
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/2fd869ea-607b-4a52-ac94-dec8461f1b64.jpeg">
GrapheneOS is probably the best Android ROM, it completely removes all Google services and makes significant privacy and security improvements to the entire operating system stack.
Ive never used grapheneOS tbh. Should give it a go someday then!
Ive always used LineageOS, and installed the nano google services package afterwards. Time to shake it up a bit if i can i suppose! ( i do use android auto, but with voice app disabled )
Trust me, Graphene is awesome! Check out their website and read through the documentation, it’s truly amazing. So many security improvements, basically no bloatware, no Google apps or services whatsoever. All the Google network services are replaced by GrapheneOS proxies or can be entirely disabled, you can install Google Play services if you want to, but they are sandboxed and don’t have access to sensitive data on your phone. You can still pass SafetyNet checks and use most banking apps though. They also push out updates insanely fast, often on the same day, just a couple of hours later than on the stock OS. I think Graphene was the first major non-stock ROM that got Android 14.
Just did some research as it all sounds very good, and they dont support the fairphone 4. Some of their arguments are legit ( missing cpu features ), some of them are questionable ( fairphone not releasing security patches fast enough. Idk, lineagoeos seems to release weekly together with the android releases? ). Guess ill have to look at grapheneOS at the future when i look at a new phone ( so in 7 or 8 years lol )
Yeah, they are really picky about phone vendors in regards to security. In order to achieve a fully patched Android system, you need multiple up-to-date components. Obviously, you need security patches for Android itself, but you also need kernel patches for the specific device that you are using. Those are provided by the vendor. I can imagine that Fairphone can’t always provide them on time, as they are a smaller company with limited resources. That’s why only Google Pixels are currently supported by GrapheneOS. Btw: If you get an 8th Gen Pixel, you can also use that for a really long time, they just extended the security patches for the newest generation of phones to 7 years.
You can try DivestOS, it’s also a good ROM for privacy and they have support for the Fairphone 3 and 4.
Thats too bad. I dont plan on buying a new phone in , at least, 6 years so itll have to wait then.
I know fairphone might look to be slow on driver update, but afaik they skipped a few versions to go straight to android 13. And i also know they try to maintain their own drivers so they provide support even if the soc vendor doesnt.
Its a very complex thing tbh, but ill keep grapheneOS on my radar!
That’s not good.
Interesting. I don’t know how they do this, as SOC manufacturers almost never publish sufficient documentation in order to actually write custom drivers.
Maybe try out DivestOS, they support Fairphones.
What’s so great about Gmail? It’s just another Email provider and it’s not even end-to-end encrypted. Use Proton Mail or Tutanota.
I don’t know about tutanota but Proton is only end to end encrypted to other users of Proton and that’s very rare to encounter.
You can also use openPGP on Gmail, but that is also very uncommon since pretty much no one uses openPGP.
Gmail is great because it’s free and does its job perfectly fine. An email provider doesn’t need more.
Apparently Gmail was the best many years ago but I guess everyone else caught up.
Proton encrypts the messages in your inbox, they can’t read them, only you can. Google on the other side can look at all of your messages, as they have access to the encryption keys. Also, Proton is open source allowing you to verify everything yourself.
You can encrypt your emails on Gmail too.
I have thought about switching for many years, but I haven’t pulled the trigger. Sounds like a lot of work
It also seems like K9 mail isn’t supported with proton and thunderbird support is a little more annoying to set-up.
And you know, free is nice.
5 euro a month is little more than I would want.
You can’t encrypt your inbox, Google will always be able to read everything.
I switched from Gmail to Proton, trust me, it’s not that much work. Especially with Easy Switch.
Yeah, but the (open source btw) Proton Mail Android app is totally fine.
Proton Mail also has a generous free plan
I have a free account that I made years ago, but I haven’t used it for anything.
Btw, most emails are not end to end encrypted on proton. Only emails from/to other proton users or emails sent/received using their “password-protected emails” feature and of course any emails sent/received from anyone that’s using openPGP.
Also the free tier only includes 500 MB of storage which is extremely little, it also doesn’t include IMAP support which is a deal breaker, it also injects ads into your sent emails which is stupid.
I will try it for a short time and see.
For me to keep using it (and pay, because the free tier is pretty bad) it really needs to be better and not just in the privacy sense. I also need more money.
I know that, but I’m talking about the emails that are stored in your inbox, not incoming/outgoing messages.
I’ve been using Proton Mail since 2020 and so far I only used ~100MB.
Because it’s impossible to offer IMAP when all the messages are encrypted. They would have to decrypt your messages on their servers in order to allow you to connect via IMAP. Proton Mail offers a workaround though, you can download their Proton Mail Bridge application on your computer, which will locally decrypt the messages and create a local IMAP server that you can connect to with your Email client of choice. That way, the unencrypted messages never leave your computer.
Uh, no. Where does Proton Mail inject ads? That’s only something that Google would do. If you mean the signature, Apple has been doing the same thing for over a decade. It’s not really ads though, it’s just a short string of text saying ‘Sent from Proton Mail’. It’s added before the message is sent though, so you can just delete it. Apple does the same thing, if you send an email from an iPhone it will say ‘Sent from my iPhone’ in the Email signature.
All my emails in Gmail are 2,7 GB and of course I would want to import them, what’s the point otherwise.
Yes, I know. I thought I said that earlier.
The workaround isn’t possible to use with a free account.
Yes, that is what I mean. I don’t know about Apple since I don’t use anything from Apple, but you can’t turn off the footer with a free proton account.
It’s clearly an ad for Proton. I have nothing against it except that it’s impossible to turn off. Also it’s stupid to have those for the web app, as they are meant for the receiver to know that you’re on a mobile and maybe can’t respond.
Well, all of those issues would be solved by Proton Mail Plus for 3,50€/month ($4). For Gmail, you pay with your data.
Yes, I know. I just don’t know if it’s worth 4,99 €/month
Google used to be an awesome company.
They have turned into absolute garbage, something I never thought possible.
I’m locked into Gmail, that’s too big of a pain in the ass to switch, but everything else I try to avoid like the plague. From shitty hardware, to abandoned software to adinfested garbage, everything they are making right now is straight dogshit.
Yeah, this is what I’m talking about. I feel like we had all these things >10 years ago. It really feels like once they realized google+ wasn’t going to win over facebook, they were done.
Google search has become some real garbage lately too. I can’t search for anything without getting a full page of generic useless crap that was either written by AI or an incompetent author.
Isn’t this a lab toggle?
Create a new email, forward all mails from gmail to this new email, start using the new email?
Proton Mail makes it pretty easy to switch from Gmail with its Easy Switch feature
What The Fuck
Time to switch and start donating to Mozilla.
I was still using Chrome for some things at work, just because that’s our assumed default, but I know enough to switch over there too now. Maybe I’ll update the documentation to help other people switch too…
Insert “I’m doing my part” meme
The CEO needs to be fired and unstead it should be used for Development.
They deoend on Google to keep it up.
Sure but browsers don’t make that much money.
People lambaste Mozilla for their non browser initiatives but I wonder how they expect mozilla to exist if the google money goes away.
Lol, I love when Lemmy supports privacy focused stuff then turns against itself realizing it is still a company making money and requesting money.
Yeah and I still trust Firefox way more then Google.
Just subscribed to recurring donation to Mozilla. Thanks for reminder.
Are you really quit posting about a keylogger/distributed compute platform posing as a web browser like 10 years too late?
Don’t shame me.
Kinky
Why is anyone surprised by this?! Google is an ad company.
Even though google bought double click I some times wonder if it was just double click wearing a google skin the whole time scobbydoo style
I love how they position it as a privacy feature, and then fail to explain how it does anything to increase privacy.
Isn’t that false advertising? This literally does nothing for your actual privacy.
Sure it does… It invades your privacy.
The topics become a super valuable fingerprinting metric, as well as continuing a form of cross site tracking now that 3rd party cookies are taken more seriously
It took you until now to not use it anymore?
Brave with it’s own adblocking turned off, but anti-fingerprinting on and loaded with Adnauseam is great!
What’s sad is that I’ve always been a huge Google supporter but they keep on moving in a direction that I’m no longer comfortable with.
I’m also a certified Google proctor, which allows me to officially tutor and troubleshoot problems with anything Google.
I just don’t see myself ever using that skillet in the future due to the current assault on its users’ privacy from Google.
The Google Skillet. Another product that nobody’s heard of :)
I know, right??
I got practically everyone I know into using the whole Google ecosystem. Now I deeply regret it. Their “do no evil” motto was ditched and it’s all about profits now.
I haven’t used chrome in about 5 or 6 years now. Firefox all the way. I can’t support a monopoly on the web.
Stop supporting the Google monopoly on browser rendering engines and use Firefox or LibreWolf