Edited to remove my bad language, please excuse me
Total rubbish @Unknown, get your facts right. :shakes head: this is how propaganda and fake news gets spread, because people read some nonsense and believe it without checking their facts.
Firefox blocks trackers and fingerprinting by default. Chrome doesnât. You really think this is ânot much betterâ? Online trackers are the greatest single threat to privacy, fingerprinters are insidious and you think that blocking them by default is ânot much betterâ.
Yes, you can do even better by modifying about:config (and I do) but doing all this stuff out of the box would make Firefox unusable for some people and would turn off most new people immediately.
I wonât defend Mozilla ad infinitum - present me with some actual facts, a reasonable argument and not total codswallop and Iâll happily agree with you.
It still wonât change my initial point though, which is that Gael does the /e/ project no favours by retweeting rubbish news stories like he did.
As for powering up Firefox. I use DoH TRR, strict-origin-when-cross-origin referrer policy, first part isolation, Privacy Badger, HTTPS Essenitals, Ublock Origin, Containers inc Facebook and a few other extensions based on it, Decentraleyes and my common sense I find uBlock origin a bit intrusive sometimes, and have to deactivate some tracker-blocking to use some websites (notably airlines) but generally this works well. I also tried some extensions which remove tracking info from hyperlinks but these didnât work very well and required a lot of manual overriding, so I stopped using them. I donât delete cookies on every exit and retain all history because I want my browsing experience to be fluid and efficient. I recently started using a password manager and receiving breach alerts too.
I think the discussion has probably run itâs course now, unless Gael himself joins us and explains why it was in fact totally reasonable to retweet that article. Iâm open to being persuaded
If Firefox so good why are there are so many privacy guides for it? Also its a lie that it block fingerprint because fingerprint consist from thousands of parameters like your system language, screen resolution ect. Only Tor browser has non unique fingerprint after install if you not change any settings and stay on window mode not go full screen, but i must agree that Firefox is only browser availiable that can be setted up for privacy, also i using this guide for myself ( but i not agree with authour about extension, i use more popular extentions, as extensions with small number of users also can be one of fingerprint parameter) https://12bytes.org/articles/tech/firefox/firefoxgecko-configuration-guide-for-privacy-and-performance-buffs also most âprivacy softwareâ nedded additional configuration.
If Firefox so good why are there are so many privacy guides for it?
Well youâve said so yourself, Firefox is not better than Chrome without editing about:config. Also about the fingerprint techniques that exists, if a site relies on third party connections those will be blocked by default in Firefox. While not the definitive tool, it is quite a good start.
@PNJ88_Beast, based on default settings, Firefox protects privacy more than Chrome.
@Unknown youâre right about the fingerprinting, there are always some things which can be used but considering a fresh install of Firefox where everything is default and no extensions are installed, I think Mozilla can say they include features to block fingerprinting; but then if we all add extensions etc then of course we become more unique and fingerprintable.
As for why there are so many privacy guides for Firefox? I think the reasons are both honest and dishonest: Honest reasons are that there are improvements which can be made, as you and many others have identified. The dishonest reasons are of course for websites to get visitors so they can sell advertising, same as all websites
Interestingly, I just checked my off-facebook activity and there was only one entry which I didnât recognise but I think relates to an online purchase I did. So, I so seem to have avoided Facebooks pixel-tracking mechanism quite well using my set-up above. I imagine that I havenât escaped Google though, theyâre more sneaky⌠but of course thereâs no âoff-google activityâ page, so in this case Facebook are doing better than Google at privacy - oh look a flying pig!
At least it looks that privacy essentials add-on has some useful protection mechanisms. There is the kuketz blog, it has a series of articles regarding Firefox with suggestions for using the right add-ons. The Librefox github site has good tips too.
I agree with @madbilly. I like Mozilla Firefox.
/e/ may just discuss the question with Mozilla for invert the config: delivery Firefox with telemetry switched off , asking users to revert it by convince them with good reasoning. And, after all, the configuration of the app installation is open and may be changed
Yes itâs a pity telemetry is enabled by default, let the end-user to choose on first start.
but to say ânightmareâ
Anyhow, Mozilla did a huge job for privacy online, thatâs a great, modern et efficient software.
It just needs some tweaks regarding your expectations (to disable GLS, Google Safe Browsing, Telemetry, and so on.)
For anyone looking to understand these types of disagreement more, this seems like a clash of deontological ethics versus ethical pragmatism.
My two cents on the matter are: It seems to me like Google wants to fundamentally (and imo negatively) change the internet, and Chrome is one of itâs most useful tools for doing this. Firefox is the best realistic alternative to prevent that change from happening right now, so I use Firefox [while also advocating for an anticapitalist revolution, of course].
iâve been looking into the browsers recently, there are a lot of quite good alternatives. Most of them are described here:
but another good one is the Epic browser.
I too like Firefox, so iâm gonna go for the combo of Waterfox on my windows laptop and Icecat on my /e/ samsung phone.
Since this article is 4 years old, I wonder if there is any new information about Waterfox.
I say this because Iâve been using it for a couple of days now and didnât notice those pratices pointed by the article.
Weâll Iâm gonna dig deeper and let you know.
Thanks for sharing @kalman
Could install it in Debian 8 âJessieâ and used it there some years ago. From Debian 9 âStretchâ on it cannot be installed anymore, and now running the current stable Debian 10 âBusterâ it seems it doesnât exist at all anymore, not even for old-old-stable Jessie.
I am sure it was in the Debian packages list around 2014. Now it is still available as a tarball in Linux https://www.waterfox.net/download/ Nice when you like an old-fashion computer and when you run an older OS it will work.
Well Epic browser is chromium based, as are many others on that list, so that still supports Googleâs sneaky attempts to do the same as Microsoft tried to do with IE all those years ago.
that is interesting. What are your views - is it necessarily a bad thing if initiatives like these fall in the hands of larger corporates? I think that it is possible for for-profit organizations to also have good policies, e.g. Qwant in the searching it provides, Magic earth (the maps app), etc. Iâm not saying it happens often, iâm just saying itâs possible:). i donât really know a lot about System1 - the initiator of Waterfox seems pretty positive about them in his blog!
I find uBlock origin a bit intrusive sometimes, and have to deactivate some tracker-blocking to use some websites (notably airlines) but generally this works well. I also tried some extensions which remove tracking info from hyperlinks but these didnât work very well and required a lot of manual overriding, so I stopped using them. I donât delete cookies on every exit and retain all history because I want my browsing experience to be fluid and efficient. I recently started using a password manager and receiving breach alerts too.
but of course thereâs no âoff-google activityâ page, so in this case Facebook are doing better than Google at privacy - oh look a flying pig! 
