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Browsers

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Loci.Cantos
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Browsers

#1 Post by Loci.Cantos »

Google is a remarkably intrusive company. Like Microsoft, it wants to get hold of and sell every personal detail of a person's life that it can get its algorithms on. They can do what they like, however, this is not my preference; I simply will not allow it. My whole reason for leaving the MS platform is to get away from prurient and voyeuristic software. Ergo, and in this context: can Google Chrome be locked down as tightly, as say, Firefox?

Is there a way secure the Chrome Browser such that Google has no special or backdoor access to it that allows the company to gain access to users' personal data? I can reach a pretty high security bar with Firefox (and the onion browser will do for more secure browsing), but can this same bar be reached with Chrome?

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bw123
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Re: Browsers

#2 Post by bw123 »

Loci.Cantos wrote:Google is a remarkably intrusive company. Like Microsoft, it wants to get hold of and sell every personal detail of a person's life that it can get its algorithms on. They can do what they like, however, this is not my preference; I simply will not allow it. My whole reason for leaving the MS platform is to get away from prurient and voyeuristic software. Ergo, and in this context: can Google Chrome be locked down as tightly, as say, Firefox?

Is there a way secure the Chrome Browser such that Google has no special or backdoor access to it that allows the company to gain access to users' personal data? I can reach a pretty high security bar with Firefox (and the onion browser will do for more secure browsing), but can this same bar be reached with Chrome?
I would be interested in why you think you, "...can reach a pretty high security bar with Firefox" or with TOR browser? Where and how exactly do you measure that? How does your use of either browser affect any company from tracking you or collecting information?

P.S. prurient?
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rivenathos
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Re: Browsers

#3 Post by rivenathos »

I never subscribed the Chrome browser popularity crowd. I still run the ESR Firefox with no issues or worries. For mission-critical activities and security, unless I am given better data (and I am always open to suggestions - PM me), Firefox is the best horse in the race.
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Wheelerof4te
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Re: Browsers

#4 Post by Wheelerof4te »

Chromium is like Chrome, but fully open-source and trustworthy. I highly recommend it.

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Re: Browsers

#5 Post by CwF »

I'm passed the point of believing any browser will seriously adopt efficiency and privacy as primary design motives. To some degree those ideals left the realm of the browser anyway. Website design itself is corrupt. If a user takes to much time to manage outside the box, they are circumvented by ip collation at the provider level. The internet experience is now intended to the unlimited data packaged short attention span consumer.

Regardless of the browser used on whatever device some sites work well while most show useless bling, video's, crosschecking your facebook, whatever and after 3 megs of data you find that one sentence of info. The signal to noise ratio in the data sense can't be more than 1%, regardless of the browser.

I use VM's for everything and with a good setup, security, malicious code, and mysterious 'holes' in the browsers are all irrelevant. Risk is ZERO with any browser, 52.9 included which I'll be on for the next year or so. The reason to upgrade is something isn't working, not there is a new version...Much upgrade 'necessity' is more often arbitrary.

Awhile back with VM's I measured install impact, general performance, and data dribble. I'm limited bandwidth so dribble bugs me. Firefox does dribble some, and it does phone home on initial install, and it does it's own upgrade check. But that's what I decided to use. Ironically I do allow popularity contest.

With a browser window actually a vm, each can have it's tweaks, it own host file, it's own bookmarks and cookies, essentially it's own level of functionaity. This does reduce crosstalk and helps the dribble. It's also an excessive solution. It does obscure the view google or facebook or whomever. I'm one of those who believes a minority of their data is 'actionable'. They don't. It's an interesting conversation about the 'conclusions' they can make that are no more than dice rolled assumptions. I'm not sure the current crop of intelligence knows the difference between a conclusion and a correct assumption.

Anyway my point. No browser is going to prioritize user experience, that's #2, or 3. No browser is in full control of user experience either. The majority of the internet is a waste of bandwidth

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debiman
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Re: Browsers

#6 Post by debiman »

Loci.Cantos wrote:Google is a remarkably intrusive company. Like Microsoft, it wants to get hold of and sell every personal detail of a person's life that it can get its algorithms on. They can do what they like, however, this is not my preference; I simply will not allow it. My whole reason for leaving the MS platform is to get away from prurient and voyeuristic software. Ergo, and in this context: can Google Chrome be locked down as tightly, as say, Firefox?
it's not only the software, it's mostly the web itself.
it is hard to find a web page that does not call on google servers.
so you need addons that block these requests.
Is there a way secure the Chrome Browser such that Google has no special or backdoor access to it that allows the company to gain access to users' personal data? I can reach a pretty high security bar with Firefox (and the onion browser will do for more secure browsing), but can this same bar be reached with Chrome?
people need to understand that browsing through tor might be anonymous (well, even that is questionable), but it is not secure.
anonymity and security are not synonyms!
Wheelerof4te wrote:Chromium is like Chrome, but fully open-source and trustworthy.
the calls to google servers are still in the code. not so trustworthy in my book.
but you can try this:
https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium

HankB
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Re: Browsers

#7 Post by HankB »

The Brave browser promises more privacy. https://brave.com/

I have no experience with it so I cannot comment.

Wheelerof4te
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Re: Browsers

#8 Post by Wheelerof4te »

People concerned about privacy in 2018 are like soldiers in WWII who still believe trenches are gonna keep them safe. Don't sacrifice obvious performance gain for a illusion.
If you don't use social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, then your privacy is already much safer than for most people.

And if you are not some big shot, the NSA won't care about you.

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Re: Browsers

#9 Post by pawRoot »

Wheelerof4te wrote:People concerned about privacy in 2018 are like soldiers in WWII who still believe trenches are gonna keep them safe. Don't sacrifice obvious performance gain for a illusion.
+100

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Re: Browsers

#10 Post by Hallvor »

HankB wrote:The Brave browser promises more privacy. https://brave.com/

I have no experience with it so I cannot comment.
I have never tried it on the desktop, but it is great on my smartphone.
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Re: Browsers

#11 Post by Bloom »

I use Chromium because Firefox slowly but steadily eats all my available memory. And there's 8 GB in my desktop system!
Don't use Google Chrome. That is built by adding spyware to open source Chromium and releasing that as closed source Google Chrome.
For security, I have the following extensions:
1. uBlock Origin - blocks ads
2. Privacy Badger - blocks tracking, as an alternative Ghostery is also a good one for this
3. SafeScript - blocks JavaScript unless I enable for specific domains. So Facebook and Google inserts on a website can never execute JavaScript on my system.
3. Cookie Autodelete - Chromium can be configured to allow cookies only for the primary domain of a website and delete them when the browser closes; this extension deletes cookies when a tab closes or when a certain time passes for a suspended tab.
4. The Great Suspender - not really a security extension, but it suspends open tabs that aren't used for a certain amount of time. This also blocks websites from executing JavaScript when you're busy elsewhere. And it frees up resources!

Concerning the Brave browser: it is built upon Chromium and it works fine -- I use it on my smartphone. But as a rule, I don't install software that is not available in the Debian repositories on my desktop.

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Loci.Cantos
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Re: Browsers

#12 Post by Loci.Cantos »

Thanks everyone. I'm sorry I'm late getting back to this thread.

I presently run Tor, Firefox ESR, and Chromium. I perceive their security efficacy in that order: T, FF, C.

In addition to Bloom's suggestions, which I use and which are very good, I have found NoScript to be my most valuable browsing tool. It has a bit of a learning curve but the payoff is worth your time. Using NoScript, you will learn a lot about who is selling your data to whom, and who is attempting to track you and gather information about you on every page you visit.
https://noscript.net/

You can test the security of your browser(s) here:
https://browseraudit.com
There are others but I cannot comment on them as I have not used them much.

bw123: Yes prurient, as in salacious. Apart from the mere monetary aspect to corporate data spying, there is a layered aspect of sexual depravity and power gratification to all spying that is well-documented in psychological research. It is classed as a voyeuristic disorder.

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Re: Browsers

#13 Post by fch »

Wheelerof4te wrote: 2018-09-14 18:04 People concerned about privacy in 2018 are like soldiers in WWII who still believe trenches are gonna keep them safe. Don't sacrifice obvious performance gain for a illusion.
If you don't use social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, then your privacy is already much safer than for most people.

And if you are not some big shot, the NSA won't care about you.
If you don't use social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, then your privacy is already much safer than for most people.

I recently found out the best social network on earth, this forum!

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