Is Firefox a good choice?

Hi @Anti-Gafam,

I didn’t find any easy way to import bookmarks in Mozilla Firefox app.
But if you have the knowledge (hoping what I say is not a big mistake), you have a look in the database directory in firefox app directory:

You can do that with adb as root…
I’m quite sure top_sites or tab_collections might be the files where the bookmarks are stored.
But they are android databases and my knowledge stops here to play with this kind of file.

Not sure all files are SQLite databases…
Anyway, you can try download then to PC (adb pull) and open them with some tools :wink:

Hi,
since I do not understand the meaning of the different lines of table, I am wondering if I should consider Brave (but Chromium > Google ?) or Opera instead of Firefox … Any advice ?

@anon88181694 : I do not see Librewolf on the table … is it worth considering it?

Thank you

@sonyxa2
This table is specifically for Android browsers and ones that are open source.

I would not recommend using Opera due to it being proprietary and its controversies over the years, it is not what it once was: Opera (company) - Wikipedia

Librewolf is a great option on desktop as I mentioned in my original comment.

For Android you can’t go too wrong with either Bromite or my Mull. And Brave works too if you really want.

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I wonder a bit about the idea that Firefox is Anti-Gafa. It’s not, and has never been.

Mozilla has been sponsored by Google for many years with some hundred million (!) dollars. Consequences are that Firefox used Google as the default search engine (until others paid also for that) and the integration of Google’s suspicious Safe Browsing API which is per default on in Chrome, Brave, Opera AND Firefox.

If someone really wants a Firefox, LibreWolf is probably the best choice.

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Safe Browsing is an amazingly important service that can stop malware and phishing attacks within minutes.

In Firefox you can configure it so it only strictly downloads databases and performs the checks locally.

Disabling Safe Browsing for yourself along with family and friends is NOT good advice.

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That’s what Google says, yes. And Microsoft says the same about their own even more worse solution.

Indeed the only thing I saw in the last ten years was a false positive related to a web forum like here with several hundred users, two times in a few weeks. And if you provide such a forum you have immediately a lot of trouble when Google says your site is malware.

We don’t know that at all. The usual and propagated way is the local check against whitelists of hashes.

But as far as I read the API allows also sending a hash value (or even a complete URL) to a Google server for checking there. We just can’t say if or when this is used or what for. But after all this would allow to monitor the entire traffic this browser instance has.

Another thing is the cyclic download of the whitelists. To accomplish that the browser must request central servers again and again, at least several times a day, and the more protection you want to have the more often. Already this allows to track your position in networks, your activity over day times and (because you can’t control these requests at all) also a lot more.

It’s such a good advice that I do this immediately after installation in the hope that the browser really stops it. LibreWolf does this even by default.

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This is indeed very interesting.

I just wonder if uBlock Origin, when properly configured (meaning with the proper lists against Deceptive site and Attack sites) doesn’t do the same thing as Google Safe Browsing just without the download protection against Malware and Unwanted software?

I read here “How does built-in Phishing and Malware Protection work? | Firefox Help” the following: "Phishing and malware protection works by checking the sites you visit against lists of reported phishing, unwanted and malware sites. These lists are automatically downloaded and updated every 30 minutes or so when phishing and malware protection features are enabled. "

Every 30min seemed really excessive to me. I wonder why such a high refresh rate?

This is a need when you want to guarantee prompt reaction “within minutes”.

Very good but something escapes me. Is the list existing at t0min really different from the one updated at t30min?

What I mean is that t0min’s list already protects me, doesn’t it? Not necessarily need to go connect every 30 min. What is the probability that I visit a malicious site whose update actually took place within 30 minutes?

The question being: how many malicious sites are updated every 30min? 1; 10; 100; 100000000?

Another plausible option: I don’t understand anything I’m writing and how Google Safe Browsing works completely escapes me. :sweat_smile:

What I understand is that it is still about security VS privacy. Regarding the latter, can Firefox be trusted to anonymize the data sent to GSB?

But the question is: how to find out whether a new download is needed or not? Simple cyclic polling is the most practical solution.

I’m especially interested in the mechanism how an evil website get’s into that list. What is needed for that, who checks it by what rules? And how long is a website then mentioned there? Will it be checked again? – We must understand that: an american company officiates as a network police here, they perform a world wide executive task, like an authority.

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@irrlicht @anon88181694
Does this option can work ? :

I just wonder if uBlock Origin, when properly configured (meaning with the proper lists against Deceptive site and Attack sites) doesn’t do the same thing as Google Safe Browsing just without the download protection against Malware and Unwanted software?

Indeed, that’s a problem and a big one.