Yet another reason to switch to Firefox, or even better, a hardened fork like LibreWolf !librewolf@lemmy.ml

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71 points

What functionality would I lose/gain if I switch from Firefox to Librewolf? I’m admittedly an amateur in the privacy space, and I’ve been pretty content with Firefox + Ublock and container tabs for different profiles, but I consistently get the issue that my browser fingerprint is pretty unique, and I have no idea how to or even if I can anonymize that anymore.

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44 points

Librewolf is not associated with Mozilla and does not receive their primary source of funding from Google like Mozilla does. I really like having the same browser and browser synchronization between my phone and desktop/laptop, so librewolf is out for me. They have no interest or resources to build an Android version. Waterfox does at least have desktop / android option and takes things at least one small step further away from Google.

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U can sync regular mobile ff and librewolf. Thats what i currently have.

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It is the same browser. LibreWolf doesn’t change much of the Firefox code, mostly just the configuration. They enable various privacy/security settings by default and remove Mozilla telemetry. You can go to the LibreWolf settings and enable Firefox Sync, and it will work just fine with your Mozilla account and other Firefox browsers.

For Android, I like to use Mull, it’s a hardened build of Firefox, similar to LibreWolf.

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5 points

Thanks for the answer! I run Windows, iOS and Linux across multiple devices, and sync is definitely needed for me as well. I’ll look into Waterfox!

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2 points

You can enable Firefox sync in Librewolf, it works fine.

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16 points

Tangent note: I think browser fingerprinting is only a source of concern if you use VPN. Otherwise, your IP is already a good enough identifier, and quite likely doesn’t rotate often enough. Please someone correct me if I’m wrong.

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1 point

Yeah I’d only worry about it if I were trying to buy drugs on the dark net or something. I guess if torrenting became illegal I would also worry.

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15 points

Switching from Firefox to Librewolf has some pros and cons. Librewolf is a fork of Firefox focused on privacy and security, with telemetry stripped out and privacy settings maxed out by default. You’ll gain better out-of-the-box privacy protections, meaning less tracking and data collection without having to tweak settings yourself.

However, you might lose some convenience. Librewolf might not support certain Firefox features like Sync, since it relies on Mozilla’s servers (not sure about that point, maybe it does work). It can also break some websites due to the stricter privacy settings. Another thing to consider is that you won’t get updates as quickly as Firefox.

Regarding browser fingerprinting, it’s a tricky beast. Librewolf can help somewhat by making your fingerprint less unique, but it’s not a silver bullet. Tools like uBlock Origin and container tabs are great, but adding something like the CanvasBlocker extension can also help reduce fingerprinting. Ultimately, no setup is perfect, but Librewolf is a solid step towards better privacy.

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2 points

I don’t really care too too much about privacy. If they get rid of the Pocket button then I’d be happy enough.

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2 points

Firefox sync is disabled by default but you can enable it in the settings.

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4 points

Yes, why to do this?

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2 points

if it’s fingerprinting you care about, i’d give mullvad browser a try. it’s a firefox fork tailored to increase privacy and blend you into the crowd (as long as you don’t change any setting/install addons). it’s very very neat.

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2 points

Mostly it’s just FF but with more private defaults (that you can change in the settings trivially anyway), although there are one or two extras.

There is a potential issue, though. Librewolf runs behind, so security vulnerabilities, particularly for zero-day exploits, take longer to be patched.

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150 points

Would everyone who is surprised by this please raise your hand? . . . That’s what I thought.

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41 points

I am

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78 points

License and registration, sir

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26 points

Really? That’s not what the data from your api says /s

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20 points

You don’t need to actually write it, just raise your hand and we have registered your vote, either via your computer’s camera, Google Nest, Google Assistant or inferred it by analysing the WiFi data returned by your Google Mesh network.

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7 points

Keep your hand raised because I’m coming in for a perfectly-landed high-five!

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3 points

perfectly-landed never happened before, and never will

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7 points

Not surprised, but still disappointed.

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117 points

It baffles me that they sell Chrome as private and/or secure, and baffles me even more that people believe them.

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28 points

It baffles me people use chrome.

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10 points

Why? There was a time when chrome was significantly better, and most people hate change.

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11 points

I remember back in the day everyone used Firefox. Then Chrome came out and there was a nice ad campaign and it was actually way faster.

Then slowly everyone switched to Chrome. At some point in the last 15 years, it switched to Firefox being superior.

I switched back to Firefox maybe like 7~ years ago? But I did it for open source reasons.

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94 points
*

This is hilarious! It even works on Edge, Vivaldi and even Brave 🀣. Good thing I use Firefox in almost everything or general day to day use

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Firefox πŸ”› πŸ”

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3 points

🦊🦊

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17 points

Vivaldi and Brave have the option to disable the Hangouts extension in settings, which should disable this.

As linked in the article, it is indeed used for β€œHangouts” (Meet) troubleshooting.

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3 points

This is good news since Vivaldi is my goto chromium browser (when I need to really use it)

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5 points

I’ll admit, in several places I used Edge as an effort to have at least some layer of distrust between myself and Google. I’ll have to quit that though.

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1 point

I like your style. I went looking and found β€œswitchbar” which kinda/sorta eases this bouncing between browsers idea:

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/open-with-switchbar/klgpknafjlhnpkppfbihchgfebbdcomd

It’s not elegant, but it supports the workflow you suggest. I kind of like the idea of using Edge for google.com and Chrome for microsoft.com. I’m not optimizing my experience (it may in fact be very sub-optimal), but I’m also using competition to neutralize potential shenanigans.

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2 points
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I kind of like the idea of using Edge for google.com and Chrome for microsoft.com.

Dang, just use Firefox. It’s so much easier then this

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-1 points
7 points

such a sensationalist article there. mozilla isnt an advertising company, they bought a company that specialises in privacy focused ad campaigns so they can provide an alternative to google for companies.

which is what they should be doing.

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4 points

Welp, might as well just use w3m 🀣

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93 points

idk what to tell you if you’re still using chrome

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37 points

Or anything Google for that matter. I see a lot of praise on Lemmy for their Pixel phones, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they eventually find there was a backdoor in their firmware all this time. Yes of course, I can not prove that right now, but this news about Google Chrome isn’t news for no reason. Don’t trust anything Google if you care about privacy, it is literally their business model (selling targeted ads).

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31 points

Relevant username.

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1 point

People don’t hate Google as much as they should. It’s cringeworthy how much they promote this ad company on this platform. They don’t even realze themselves they got comprised.

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20 points

Wrll you have to use a pixel phone to use graphene os

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Yeah, I’m not super happy about that part, but don’t really know what to do

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1 point

Eat the ads then.

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6 points

Well pretty much all computers have a backdoor to the CPU. That hasn’t been proven for Pixel phones though.

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0 points

No, only Google has backdoors that are coming to light tome after time. Stop defending them Google ad fan boi.

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I fucking hate Google and wouldn’t use any of their (proprietary) software, but Pixel phones are amazing. Hear me out, Google is the only phone manufacturer right now, that puts extensive hardware security features like MTE, a secure element, as well as a bunch of others in their phones. The Google Titan M2 is based on an open-source project called OpenTitan, and Google has even contributed their own changes upstream. It’s based on the open RISC-V architecture, and it’s the most complete and secure implementation of a secure element that you can find in an Android phone. The only thing that comes even close is the β€œSecure Enclave” in Apple ARM chips, that are used in modern iPhones, iPads and Macs. I understand the concern about a potential backdoor in the firmware, but that’s a valid concern with basically every CPU on the market right now. x86 are ARM are completely proprietary, so you can’t really trust any CPU based on one of these architectures. The old Google Titan M1 was based on ARM, Apple’s Secure Enclave is also based on ARM, as well as Snapdragon’s SPU (which is incomplete and insecure anyway). The Titan M2, being based on open hardware architecture and firmware, is the most trustworthy secure element, despite being made by Google. It includes features like Insider Attack Resistance, support for the Weaver API, Android StrongBox hardware keystore implementation and is used for a secure implementation of Android Verified Boot. GrapheneOS is free, open-source, and doesn’t use any proprietary Google apps/services by default. Although I hate Google, a Pixel with GrapheneOS is currently the best option for a secure smartphone.

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-1 points

Google fan boy. Good luck promoting that shitty ad company.

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6 points

I do: DON’T

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