Privacy

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Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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Best ways to make mainline browsers private? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by KingDingbat@lemmy.world to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

14 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Sorry for the little rant here, but I've spent years using every one of the high level alternative browsers. Vivaldi, Brave, Waterfox, Librewolf, Opera, Zen, Tor etc. And of course the mainline ones: Chrome and Firefox.

These days I'm primarily using Librewolf. But, lately, it seems like I'm having to switch over to proper Chrome or Firefox to get most of the websites I need to work properly and find that more often websites are just broken in it - navigation doesn't work, certain links that perform functions (ie not just HTML links) don't work, pages don't load properly. Etc. Usually, my first course of action is try the broken website in Waterfox, Vivaldi or Tor, and also trying them after disabling uBlock and the browsers built in blocking. Typically I find that the only browsers that the broken website operates properly in would be Chrome, Edge or Firefox. This makes me think it's a basic browser vs. website problem. (And the "theorist" in me is saying that this is not by accident. Websites with G Analytics (all of them?) etc probably are broken on purpose in non Chrome browsers, but I digress...)

And so I've come to the idea, that if I'm finding myself having to use proper Firefox (The only mainline browser I would really trust the "best".) to get the website to work half the time anyway, maybe it's better for me to use that and try and make it as private as possible? Outside of installing uBlock on Firefox - are there any holes that I can patch otherwise and not break websites?

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[–] FineCoatMummy@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 day ago

and not break websites?

That's the hard part! IME the more private you try to make FF, the more sites will break. Well not just FF prob any browser, but I noticed it with FF when changing about:config stuff to ressist fingerprinters and improve other privacy. BTW, Edge works since Edge is Chromium with some MS shit slathered on.

There's a bunch you can tweak in about:config. Like blocking battery charge queries. turning off various telemetry from Moz. Resist fingerprinting. Cross site referrers. WebRTC. Disable Google Safebrowsing! More private search engine. But the more you change, the more sites will break. In the end, FF with all privacy tweaks, is essentially equal to Librewolf. So if you have probs with LW, prob same with FF.

I have complained to a local utility co that their site breaks in FF. Called them up. They basically told me they get so few FF users they don't care and they told me to install Chrome. Everyone is on one of 2 phone browers, or a few on desktop Chrome.

Which is the prob with losing too much market share. It's a downward spiral of irrelevancy. But we need ppl using non-Chrome browsers, or G will fuck the web even more than it already is.

There is a whole ass other topic about Identity Resolution on the web and how more and more sites will block you if the identity resolver they use can't peg your meatspace ID.