Topic: Overview on browsers. Which one should we use? Support free web while browsing. (Read 1399 times)

In which case why don't you look in to SearX instead? It's a meta-search engine which will search other engines on your behalf and display the combined results to you, all anonymously. You can host your own instance of it, and if you really want, you can configure it so it just searches Google and nowhere else and returns the results to you. You essentially get Google search without any of the tracking.

As TryNinja says, ProtonMail is free, but there are plenty of other free options availalbe, and paid options from as low as €1 a month. See here: https://www.privacytools.io/providers/email/

Part of what makes Google so good is the fact that they track their user's searches, emails, etc... And it receives a ton more of investment due to how profitable this is. DuckDuckGo doesn't know who you are prior a search, so this puts then miles behind Google usability and prediction.

ProtonMail is free. It just has a paid variant for those who need specific features. Also, the cheapest "Plus" is just $5/month, while there are promotions like the Black Friday one which makes it cost $3/month in the 2-year plan.

I agree, that's something we really need to do.
However, the alternatives are very bad.

I was trying to using DuckDuckGo... I just kind find anything there. Have you ever tried to find bitcointalk topics there?

I was trying to find my merit source application. I wrote in DDG "Bitmover bitcointalk.org merit source application"

look at the results:


The result is completely ridiculous, as it has nothing to do with the searched terms.

On the other hand, Google results were amazing. I was able to find all the relevant discussions related to my application, even in other boards. I was able to find people mentioning my application elsewhere.


Until DDG or any other search engine has the minimum usability , there is no competition to many google products.

There is a lot of competition on Chrome, which is not the best browser. But android is by far the best OS for mobile (cheaper, more customizable, etc) and google is the best search engine... Sadly, Gmail is still the best mail service as well...

I believe proton mail is better than gmail, however it is paid (and not cheap). Hard to compete..

It's complete nonsense. Google only care about their bottom line, and this entire bullshit post phrasing it as if they are looking out for the little guy is completely disingenuous. I also particularly like the "If you block cookies, we'll just have to use fingerprinting to track you instead". Great, then we'll develop tools to block that as well. What a terrible argument it is. Should we just leave our doors unlocked because otherwise the attacker will have to break a window?

There is no such thing as "free". If you are getting something for free, you are the product, and your data is the most valuable product that Google have. They have demonstrated consistently and repeatedly that they will do anything needed to keep collecting your data, from continuing to track your location and collect telemtery even when you have explicitly changed your settings to tell them not to do so, to blocking third party add-ons in Chrome which improve your privacy and block trackers.

It's not just Chrome. People need to stop using any Google product.

Thanks for sharing this.

I was reading, that's so absurd. Google has a big conflict of interest in the subject, what they are writing is unethical and immoral. Look at this:


They are basically saying that if you don't give them your data freely (by using their products) we will all have to pay for third party software, which are free now. Actually, those free software are buying google ads. If google ads becomes irrelevant, Google will lose their income, not us.

it is even possible that those publishers move to more democratic business models, like BAT/Brave or even something else.

Breaking google's ads monopoly is a gain for everyone but them.

The full changelog for Firefox 70.0 is viewable here: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/70.0/releasenotes/. All these changes were previously achievable with various add-ons and setting tweaks, but it is a welcome addition that they are now included as standard with the basic Firefox browser.

Chrome, in the meantime, instead of also trying to block unwanted cookies and trackers, have released a statement saying that blocking trackers is bad because then how else will websites make profits from selling your data and how else will advertisers be able to build a profile about you to target you with specific ads? It's ok though, they are working on new methods that will steal slightly less of your data than current methods.

The gap between Firefox and Chrome is now so large that it is ridiculous for anyone who cares even remotely about privacy to use Chrome.

Nowadays there is a lot of fuzzz about brave, because it is really paying for users to navigate online.
On the other hand, Mozilla has enhanced its privacy features.
Firefox now let you know who is tracking you. And blocking them by default

Choose your side: free money or real privacy?


https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/firefox-privacy-protections/

I'm not going to trust them and I definitely don't want to use any of their services because I don't want them tracking my every move.

There are better alternatives to everything Google offers which respect users' privacy. Relevant to our discussion, I would advocate using Firefox or Tor instead of Chrome and a proper open source password manager such as KeePass or Bitwarden instead of Google's own. For everything else, you can find good replacements at the following links:

https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/wiki/de-google
https://www.privacytools.io/

No one can be sure unless you or me work in google to know what's going underneath. Sometimes you have to trust their words if you want to use their services which are being used widely.

Then why does Google provide the option to encrypt synced data, which I assume the vast majority of users don't know about and don't use:
You have no objective way of knowing that to be true, and are simply trusting Google at this point. We know Google are terrible at security, storing some passwords in plain text for over 14 years before noticing, and we know Google spy on everyone they can as much as possible, even when they say they aren't, and sell your data without your knowledge or consent. Trusting them with your data is naive at best, and downright stupid at worst.

That's a Password Manager and purpose of password manager is to store the passwords. This does not mean that these passwords are visible to the google.They are all encrypted. If it was such a case then we would have seen so many passwords breaches.
Yes, they do spy our actions and which websites we visits and can prepare the analytical data, but our passwords are safe on google password manager.

Yup. You can see for yourself here: https://passwords.google.com/

Sign in, and see every password you have ever saved in Chrome displayed on a website and loaded from their servers. If you use Chrome, Google knows every site you visit, every page and image you look at, every keystroke you enter, every file you download/upload, all your passwords, your location, and more, and it's all linked to your email (which they read) and potentially your real identity. Chrome is spyware. Why anyone would voluntarily use it is beyond me. You are giving your entire life over to Google to do what they like with it.

When you say that chrome send the data back to google, does this means it also sends our passwords for gmail, facebook, bitcointalk etc to google ?

Chrome has a well deserved reputation as eating your RAM like there's no tomorrow, but things can vary massively on different hardware set ups and different operating systems. If you want accurate results for you, then simply download both, open the same 20 tabs in each, then open task manager/activity monitor/system monitor and see which one is using more resources.

Having said that, there's a lot more to consider when deciding which is "the best" browser than which is the least resource hungry. As long as you are running a fairly modern machine, then you shouldn't really notice any difference in system performance between different browsers. What is far more important is that Firefox is by far and away the best browser (not considering Tor) in terms of privacy, security, anti-tracking, anti-fingerprinting, and so forth. Chrome is literally spyware and sends everything you do online back to Google for collection, analysis, and sale to third parties.

So it means that firefox stands out from all the browsers and is the best ?

If i open 20 tabs on google chrome and firefox, which browser which be less resourse hungry and by how much percentage the one is better than the other ?

Also where will you rate Edge browser ?

Firefox latest version is live, Firefox 70, with new Privacy Protections. One more reason to use firefox

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/10/22/latest-firefox-brings-privacy-protections-front-and-center-letting-you-track-the-trackers/


Look at this new report example

The problem imo is not the kyc to receive payments. They were forced to do that to comply with regulations, and that's fine.

The problem is that they advertise themselves as the privacy browser, that's their slogan. But when the first obstacle appeared, they just enforced kyx to everyone and forgot their principles and their slogan. But they kept calling themselves privacy focused....

Firefox is the best, but I think if people don't want to do KYCs to get payments through BATs, they can keep using Brave browser. It is same as KYCs from blockchain.com or Coinbase if someone want to claim airdrops on their platforms. KYCs don't turn Blockchain.com or Coinbase into bad platforms, I believe. I have my solid perspective that I will not do KYCs if I don't have to mandatory to that. Example, with Binance, I simply use the lowest account level, which allows 2 BTC withdrawals maximum per day. That's fine enough, IMO.

People just easly fall into greedy with small bonuses, like Brave browser and BATs; and easily forget their main/ original purposes to use any platform (exchanges/ browsers, whatsoever).

updating:

Brave, the privacy browser, requires KYC.

https://community.brave.com/t/uphold-kyc-know-your-customer-verification-is-now-required-in-order-to-receive-bat-publisher-payouts/42035/8

So, now I am 100% sure: Firefox forever. Just uninstalled my brave.

Not sure what are you afraid of when browsing on mobile but providing that your phone is not a rooted device, you're still under surveillance of Google. I had some bad experience with Tor. It loaded and feedbacked so slowly. Not sure if it's improved but I haven't tried it again since then. However, there's an Android version of Tor Browser, why don't you try it?

I agree regarding Waterfox, BUT you can not fully remove Telemetry from Firefox.
Last version Waterfox 56.2.12 Released July 10, 2019
It is not my 1st choice browser, but I can use it as alternative.

One more good website is:
https://prism-break.org/en/all/#web-browsers

Does duckduckgo app for android provides TOR? If not, are there browser apps on Android devices that allow TOR? I don't know, so please help me if you know such TOR-accepted apps for Android. I felt a little bit unsafe when using mobile devices, but sometimes, I saw interesting posts, want to comments, and it is inconvenient if I have to turn on my computer or laptop to do this.

The problem with Waterfox is that it is run entirely by one guy, who pulls Firefox updates as and when he has the time to. You might end up waiting several days or even weeks for critical Firefox updates to find their way to Waterfox, so it does become a bit of a security risk. All the changes that Waterfox makes vis-à-vis privacy can also be applied to Firefox with a little bit of tweaking and some add ons. Here's the link to a post I made a couple of months ago with the relevant Firefox tweaks to improve privacy: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.50754832.
Another great resource for setting up Firefox is here: https://www.privacytools.io/browsers/

Support for legacy extensions is also available through Firefox ESR, so that's not a good reason for using Waterfox either.

Remember that Mozilla also collects a lot of information with Telemetry.

Few more browsers I would add:

BitTube browser
based on Firefox + integrated adblocking extension based on uBlock that earns TUBE rewards.
https://bittubeapp.com/

Waterfox browser
fork of Firefox with removed Telemetry and Limited Data Collection
https://www.waterfox.net/

DuckDuckGo android browser
https://duckduckgo.com/app

Brave browser is also what a friend of mine recommends. And based on other's experiences using  brave, I think I am now convinced to download and try it. I am currently using chrome  because it's already installed here in my smartphone. Guess, I'm going to shift for security purposes.

I've been using brave for months now and I am really satisfied with the speed and the built in ad blocker.

Thanks for this. I was looking for an alternative for firefox as my second browser since it keeps crashing on my device. I hope it works well.

The other problem is that hackers are targeting platforms with the most widely supported userbase, because they will have much more targets if they can execute a hack on a platform with the most users. 

I use several different browsers for different applications and some wesites just work better on specific browsers, so you have to switch to the browser that gives you the best result.

Most of the stuff I do happens within a virtual PC, so whatever they want to hack, will be gone by the time I restart the virtual sesssion. 

But I've also seen so many articles where it's stated that Firefox is the best browser. I didn't expected that Chrome may have such huge dominance because probably only about 50% people that I know using. The rest are mainly using Firefox. But it's quite understandable that Chrome dominate because Google is super huge company compared to Mozilla and they can promote their product much better. And yeah, you're right, most of people aren't concerned about their privacy at all.

I started to like brave browser.

It allows you to use it's normal browser and disables ads automatically. You can also use it's feature with TOR.

The bug that I've found upon opening this browser, sometimes it's not launching in the first try.

@TryNinja
I installed Vivaldi some months ago but there are things I dislike, I prefer Opera over it. Sometimes it starts to be slow after some times. In the url bar, at the right the page size displayed, it pisses me off. Only last week I found how to remove the left sidebar, good riddance. Too many updates also, almost every week. Ccleaner doesn't make a difference between Chrome and Vivaldi

I currently use Vivaldi, Opera, Chrome, Chrome Canary, Firefox, Midori.

Additional, there's also a Brave browser for mobile, especially on Android (which I already using months ago) and for IOS.

You can check here for the android version which is already available on playstore: Brave Privacy Browser: Fast, free and safe browser
And for IOS, it's already available on app store: Brave Browser fast web privacy

I am using now the Brave browser for my desktop and mobile too since my previous browser is Google Chrome.

It's quite funny that your 2nd sentence wasn't read properly though.


How could you be?
There are thousands of articles about browsers that more or less state Chrome is the best browser out there. Most people would follow it and don't care about privacy and stuff that much. We have different knowledge and personally, it's understandable.

Nearly all of my friends use Chrome, and they don't realize the privacy issue. The reason is simple, they never read about it, and nobody ever talked to them about that. So they use it with ease.

You misread my post. All the things that you mentioned are right with Brave. Actually other browsers also have some of those but rather than listing Brave's strengths, I pointed out other browsers' weaknesses. To me, Brave is a better version of Chrome, i.e I don't have to worry about my personal information being recorded by Google.

You forgot about Brave browser. In my experience, when I use TOR on Brave Browser and Tor Browser, most of time Brave browser works more efficiently, fastly, easilly to surpass capcha. Whenever I failed to log in via Tor browser several times, I switch to use Brave browser on Tor network as alternative.
There is another thing, with BBCodes displayed in signature area, sometimes Tor Browswer show sort of errors with BBcodes, just part of signature codes, such as icon, etc. In contrast, Brave browser always display signature BBCodes very well. I don't know that other users experience such errors with Tor browser or it depends on my computer itself.
There is a given option to get fixed code to surpass capcha, but I don't  want to use it.

I've been used a variety of browsers and up to now, Brave is my most favorite one. Here's why:
- Chrome: poor privacy. All of your information is recognized by Google.
- Firefox: I've been disappointed with its crash history in the past
- Tor: good privacy but too slow

Some other recommendation besides Brave:
- Naver Whale: a Chronium based Korean browser. Link: https://whale.naver.com/en/download
- Opera: it's featured with VPN and some crypto wallets.

Vivaldi has a long list of customizations and configurations but that's what make it slow and hardware consumed.

In past I already said that I'm very surprised to see such huge dominance of Chrome in market of browsers.
Firefox was always No. 1 for me. Long time ago I chose to use it instead of Chrome because it used less CPU resources of my PC.
But I have to admit that I use Chrome on my phone. Probably I started to use because it's default pre-installed browser on Android phones. I use Android phone, so no matter I use Chrome on it or no, Google with all their apps already have all information about it.
Brave browser looks like an interesting option, but so far it's niche browser. But I think it have great potential to grow.
I never used Tor, because I'm not too much concerned about my privacy. Probably I would try it only if I would want to visit deep web websites.
Didn't knew that Opera was bought by Chinese company. In past I used it a lot. I liked their data saving tools. And it was best browser when I was in bad connection areas. I remember having Opera browser on my old Nokia phones 10-15 years ago. Oh, good memories.
There is few more browser that I would like to mention.
First it's DuckDuckGo (only on mobile). I heard it's good in terms of privacy.
Ecosia - Chromium based browser. They donate 80% of ad revenue to plant trees. Very nice idea and I think it's worth to support them.
P.S I'm not sure that this thread belongs to B&H board. But personally I wouldn't like to see it in off-topic section...

I bet you didn't read anything I have written here, not even the full title...


The problem with Chromium Browser is that is doesn't get as much updates as Chrome, or Brave or Vivaldi.


Vivaldi really is a cool browser, just download it. But Vivaldi is not open source. But far better than Chrome ofc. I liked it, and I will switch to it on my work (ir works here, thankfully )
https://www.reddit.com/r/vivaldibrowser/comments/5vwihr/is_vivaldi_completely_opensource/

Chrome uses Chromium, but Chromium isn't Chrome.

Chromium doesn't have the "tracking" tools that Chrome has (like user metrics and crash report). If you disable some of the stuff that relies on Google's servers on Chromium or just start using an more privacy-oriented browser that is build over it (like Vivaldi), it's way more private than Chrome.

Just wanted to share this from bL4nkcode as he told our board to update our Mozilla Firefox.

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OP, I bet you should include on mobile browser google chrome. It's the fastest browser I used. And you can also play youtube music even when your phone is off or if you are doing something.

Same goes for the UC browser as well that is why I don't bother using it as much.

How about the one google chromium for desktop? Its still same as chrome or anything different on it.

There is also Vivaldi (based on Chromium). I like it quite a lot and started using it as one of my main browsers some months ago.

https://vivaldi.com/

Opera is a Chinese Chromium based browser.
It was sold in 2016 to a chinese company.
https://www.engadget.com/2016/07/18/opera-browser-sold-to-a-chinese-consortium-for-600-million/

I doubt they have any respect for your data, as Chinese laws don't care about users privacy, rights or anything. I believe it is the worst choice available, as it is not even supposed to be fast.

Thanks for the info,so what could be the best browser for mobile?

I am also having mozila and opera but not using much since I feel they always take too much ram and loads little bit slower.

Chrome isn't even particularly fast anymore. It's incredibly resource hungry, and eats your RAM like there is no tomorrow. Google are also planning to disable content blocking add-ons in Chrome, which will not only subject you to annoying ads, but will track you even more than already. Avoid Chrome at all costs.

You can whitelist sites which you trust, and those cookies will not be deleted. This stops you from having to log-in every time.

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If you can't be bothered configuring anything at all, then Brave is probably your best bet to use as a clean install. If, however, you can take 30 minutes to install some add ons and perform a few minor tweaks, then Firefox is by far and away the best "standard" browser to use (by "standard" I mean not including Tor).

Maybe,but I see it as good thing as long as my personal sensitive information are not available for them.

All they can do is sell these data t the companies like amazon and make revenue from it,its not doing any harm for me.

"normal browsing" is exactly the data they want. When you are doing your personal stuff, they collect data about where you would like to travel, what are your interests, what do you want to buy, what you want to read, etc etc...

I found chrome is collecting even our actions and voices through our smartphones then I started using brave browser because it is said to be one of the secured browser in terms of of our privacy policies.

But using chorme for normal browsing just because of their fast loading.

I know most of people here use Google Chrome. It is a fast browser and have all those fancy stuff Google does and people like.
But it is terrible for your privacy, as Google is collecting all your data about everything you do while using their services (and Chrome is no different).

I saw this website and I was shocked with the results of this research
Easy right?

This is the browser I use mostly, with that config, when I am not at work.


2. Tor Browser
Tor Browser is another recommendation from that website, however is it expert focused. It doesn't fit common users needs.


3. Brave Browser

Brave Browser is also a good option for new users. However in my experience it is buggy (lots of problems while loading webpages) and the lack of privacy and popular addons makes this browser a worst option to me. Firefox also has a bigger development team, fixing bugs and updating a lot faster than Brave.

I have it installed in my computer and I am using it sometimes, as I like to support this project. We need competitors in this ecosystem, as Edge and Chrome are really bad choices, and Chrome is almost monopolizing it.

Now requires KYC. The privacy browser requires KYC. That's a shame.
https://community.brave.com/t/uphold-kyc-know-your-customer-verification-is-now-required-in-order-to-receive-bat-publisher-payouts/42035/8

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Edit:


Mobile Browsers

1. Firefox Focus
Firefox Focus automatically blocks ads and delete all cookies and history everytime it is closed. It is a bit pain in the ass sometimes, but it is a good privacy choice.

2. InBrowser
Always in incognito mode, and all data is wiped when it is closed, just like Firefox Focus.


Translations:
Translated to Hindi https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.51568581