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Posted by MadaboutDana
Oct 14, 2023 at 05:57 PM
Hi folks,
Now this doesn’t have anything to do with outlining – directly. But it does have to do with information management, privacy etc. etc.
I’ve just discovered DuckDuckGo browser! Now, it used to exist for mobile only, but recently they’ve released desktop version for Mac and Windows.
The difference between the browser and all the other browsers – with the exception of Brave – is the fanatical focus on privacy (there’s much more about it on the browser website at https://duckduckgo.com/app, and also on DuckDuckGo’s main website at https://duckduckgo.com/). A lovely little icon in the address/URL bar keeps track of all the things the browser is blocking, and immediately alerts you to issues.
And the big difference between the browser and all other browsers (including Brave) is its size! Where browsers usually muscle in anything up to a GB (and sometimes more!) in size, DuckDuckGo’s browser is a modest 190MB or so. It imports your bookmarks and passwords from your existing browser(s), and so far I’ve been blown away by its speed and simplicity.
It also has its own built-in YouTube reader (which you can activate or deactivate, depending on your preferences) which automatically wipes the ads. Heh heh…
Posted by satis
Oct 15, 2023 at 03:40 AM
In the same vein, Mullvad - one of the top privacy-oriented VPN companies (and the VPN [re]sold by Mozilla/Firefox and by MalwareBytes) - also came out with its own privacy-focused “Tor-developed browser produced to minimize fingerprinting and tracking.”
https://mullvad.net/en/browser
The default search engine is DuckDuckGo, but can also choose as default Startpage (anonymous results from Google), Brave Search, Mojeek and Mullvad’s own Leta search engine. (And from DDG’ search you can switch in a search to Google by appending !G to the search term.) It also comes with the uBlock Origin ad-blocker built in.
A main selling point for Mullvad is that each user’s browser utilizes the exact same browser fingerprint so individuals can’t be picked out:
“We have standardized configurations and don’t recommend users to change settings. Firefox’s resist fingerprinting mode is on, and it will spoof many additional parameters and settings that could be used for fingerprinting. Only a specific set of fonts are made available for the browser and several hardware APIs are removed – like hardware concurrency and other APIs that could be used to extract information from your device. Another API used to fingerprint you is the WebGL, where the fingerprint attack tells your browser to render a triangle in 3D. The Mullvad Browser prevents websites from accessing the rendered content by blocking the readPixel function. One more sneaky way to collect your data for fingerprinting, is by measuring exactly how big your browser window is. Just think about it – are you the kind of user that maximizes your browser window? Or are you more a half the size of the screen kind of user? Letterboxing masks your real dimensions by adding a space around the window. So, no matter how you resize your browser, your window dimensions are unlikely to uniquely identify you.”
Although I continue to use the Brave browser (which has more limited anti-fingerprinting built into it) with a number of optional Chrome extensions for privacy and convenience, the Mullvad and DuckDuckGo browsers have supplanted Firefox for me.
Posted by Listerene
Oct 16, 2023 at 10:59 AM
FWIW, Avast Secure Browser is also an alternative. It’s based upon Chrome and the main reason to consider it over other secure browsers is that it fixes Chrome’s (and Firefox’s, Opera’s, etc.) NOTORIOUSLY insecure password feature; allowing you to store passwords without concern that they’ll be exposed to the outside world.
Posted by satis
Oct 16, 2023 at 11:02 PM
When choosing a secure browser it’s important that they update quickly to address reported attacks. I’m not sure about other platforms but Avast hasn’t been updated for a month on macOS and iOS. Since then Chrome/Chromium (Blink engine) has been updated at least six times, at least half of them to address zero-day/overflow attacks that have been seen in the wild.
The DDG browser was last updated 5 days ago the Mullvad browser 3 days ago, Vivaldi’s desktop browser 10 days ago (and the iOS browser was updated today) - all of the desktop browsers use the same Chromium engine as Avast’s browser.
(Firefox was 6 days ago, Safari 20 days ago - but they use different rendering engines.)
Posted by Anthony
Oct 17, 2023 at 06:13 PM
The main current issue of ComputerActive (UK) dedicates its main cover to “Stop using browsers that track you”.
The article, apart mentioning the best settings for Chrome and Edge, lists:
- Brave, best for all-round privacy, with privacy 5/5
- Tor browser, best for anonimity, with privacy 5/5 (but very slow)
- Duckduckgo, best for simplicity, with privacy 4/5 (but cannot add other private extensions)
- Firefox, best for tracking protection, with privacy 4/5 (but needs to add private extensions)
- Bullvad, best for using with Vpn, with privacy 3/5 (most of its privacy is tailored to Vpn only)