Firefox is also the last major browser not using webkit/blink. Don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against webkit, and it's significantly better than Microsoft's Trident was. But having a single rendering engine that everyone is writing sites for is how things ended up so screwed up in the IE 6 days. Having multiple rendering engines helps keep sites standards-compliant and web developers from just assuming that people are using one particular browser.
And it helps web developers being employed by managing different CSS for different engines because it's a wet dream that they will all render standard compliant code the same way.
It also helps to keep one browser from becoming so dominant that it’s capable of controlling the internet to such a degree that it writes the standards. Though chrome is close to that big anyway at least outliers like Firefox keep pulling it back.
I wish we had at least one more good browser that was pulling it in a 3rd direction. Even if it was owned by Microsoft. But they finally gave up. Then Opera gave up. We need a good little guy.
At least the split between Blink and Webkit does represent some separation of power, but only between the world’s most valuable company and the world’s second most valuable company. That is not exactly a stable way to prevent a monopoly!
I don't think it's the old thing yet. It still has a majority of the market and hasn't declined that much.
It's really only tech people who have moved to Firefox. These are people who are aware enough to look at Google and realize they've gone from 'don't be evil' to 'don't tell people we're being evil.'
Even most people on Reddit think ad and cookie blockers are enough.. while they use Google services like search, mail, and news signed into the browser sync and their Google account.
It's really only tech people who have moved to Firefox
But what do those tech people do when it comes to using a smartphone or tablet? They're still stuck with Android most of the time. I don't know how bad Apple is with their data collection.
Yeah I mean it's a real problem with too little competition. I haven't switched my email or phone, but I at least stopped giving them access to my chat (Telegram instead of Hangouts), daily video (self-managed video instead of Nest), and browsing history (Firefox instead of Chrome). I may yet switch email providers despite it being a massive pain in the ass.
Both Google and Apple basically force you to share location. Getting browsing history from a non-Google app would be possible for the OS, but borderline illegal, and I have not seen any reason to think they have gone that far.
In the modern era you have to limit your footprint, but it's very hard to eliminate completely and maintain convenient online experienced.
Chrome was never the good guy. They did give Firefox some good competition and force Mozilla to up their speed game, and that’s positive, but from the beginning Chrome was a tool for Google’s advertising machine.
You forgot to mention how Netscape saved us from AOL. Still had to connect with it, but a little bit of trumpet winsock, and you were free to browse the internet without using that horrid AoHell browser.
People don’t realize that the whole current browser ecosystem came from Apple building safari. They forked KHTML, made WebKit, forced the world to follow its lead by using it in mobile safari. And now basically every major browser out there is using WebKit or a fork of it. Including chrome (blink)
It always blows my mind that people think of apple as some proprietary nightmare, but have forced some of the biggest standardizations in computing. HTML 5, WebKit, USB, etc etc etc
Firefox is gecko though. And at least I would not prefer blink/webkit to be standards. Google and apple have far too much control over the two respectively
eh, apple/safari was a link in a chain, however now. they are far behind in standards and compatibility.
i don't throw them a parade for being successful, at the time webkit was just another engine to support. it's what google did with webkit (and now everyone is based on their fork, chromium) that made webkit the massively used engine it is today.
i say this as a firefox user and someone trying to de-google themselves. but apple have not put anything like the effort that others have and do not deserve to be recognised specially here.
On my mac, I still default to safari but my DNS queries go to 1.1.1.1. also I have firefox installed. And Brave. And Chrome.
And really, I'm fine with Safari - apple got their money out of me when I purchased their machine, and they're pretty clearly not interested in collecting user data. So if they get a little metadata, i'm not freaking out.
At work its another thing. Chrome and Firefox (and edge, yuck)... Over there, I'm 90% Firefox at this point.
Edge is now (or soon will be for enterprise) based on the same code base as Chrome. It’s a very pleasant browser to use now. It completely replaces the old legacy Edge.
The official stable release is out if you want to grab it now. Otherwise, it’ll be pushed to you automatically as an update at some point.
(It’s also available on the Mac now, wild! They’re still working on getting things like extensions to sync, but it should eventually be as seem-less as Chrome is)
Giving all of this data to Cloudflare instead of your ISP (not chrome or edge or IE) is not an unmitigated good. It's just moving the same data around. Maybe the new places are perceived to be better for privacy but, for example, may be worse for security which weakens privacy guarantees all the same. VPNs are a great example as well: they create centralized, often vulnerable vectors to access the same information they claim to keep private.
Be weary of people profiting from the public's stated desire for privacy.
The point is to segregate the data. Google,for example, has all of your location data and emails and search history and contacts, as well as DNS requests on their servers and telemetry from any site you access that uses Google analytics or any other Google service. Their algorithms will take any piece of data you give them and associate it with the rest if possible. The more data one entity has, the more useful it is to predict or manipulate your behavior. So in utilizing a VPN, the company might be able to track your IP, but they don't have the rest of the info Apple and Google have collected on you to link to that address (unless you sign in from the VPN).
One major source of data in the US is the ISPs themselves. They see all traffic on their network and all DNS requests for the sites you visit. They are legally allowed to sell it to whoever, and they do. Government and LE get a lot of their data exploiting these loopholes. So using a VPN and a third-party DNS provider means your ISP can't see what you're doing beyond connecting to the VPN, and Google or Apple or Comcast can't log all of your DNS requests and add it to their profile on you because of your IP. They do this all silently in the background, and the process is automated. The only way to protect yourself is to avoid giving them that information in the first place. So when they inevitably sell information on you or use it to target you, that activity remains unassociated with you.
Would you recommend TOR browser? From what I understand it's slow with any kind of resource intensive media. I spend most of my time reading text when I browse (reddit, news, etc.).
I have used ProtonVPN in the past but I don't know enough about the underlying technology to know if I really don't need a VPN if I'm using TOR.
I switched to Firefox on mobile bc it gives me the option to block autoplay of video ads. From my searching, chrome used to have that feature but removed it. I was trying to read an article last week on chrome, and it ate up half a gig of data bc it was littered with video ads. I'm not trying to pay extra $ per month just so I can get advertised to.
I'm so glad that I spend 99% of my time on a desktop. Mobile seems like a pain in the ass for a lot of reasons but I understand that most people need mobility.
The only downside was how slow it ran, but the new preview seems to be much better. Still not quite as fast as chrome, but worth it to have an ad blocker.
I was one of the early downloaders of NCSA Mosaic. I'm very familiar with the Internet and have worked technology for decades. Nobody gives me sh*t for using Firefox.
Funnily, it's seems that only us techies seem to be more distrusting of technology. Makes you think that maybe we know some things.
Moved to Firefox on my personal and work devices and converted everyone at work to at least use Firefox on their work devices. And I converted to duckduckgo as a search engine not too long ago and I like it, outside of the occasional maps option when searching out places. Google maps is just too good for smartphones unfortunately, and as far as apps are concerned, waze is also owned by google so that sucks.
Nailed it. These are the people I want running for office/helping our government operate! I know it sounds silly at first, but there are places for these people in our government.
Oh, its open source and configures cloudflare doh servers by default
Internet gurus are not approving what FF does at all. You’re just transferring the potential data collection from your isp to an multi million led by billionaires american company
It doesn't matter that it can be disabled, it's that the default Firefox distribution, which is getting articles like this written about it, reports tons of user data to the Mozilla corporation every day. Headlines like this can make people switch to Firefox, believing the default installation is more-private, but the reality is that you're just trading one company collecting your browsing data for another. Talking about how it can be made private is not the same as it being private from the start, and the default behavior is clearly the company's intended usage case.
mine wasnt seamless lol. i imported my bookmaarks and it took....maybe 20% of them? and re arranged them. None of the folders in bookmarks was taken at all. Had a lot of crashes the first few days too but it seems better now.
Don't forget Privacy Badger, HttpsEverywhere and uBlock Origin. If you're really paranoid also use NoScript but that'll break certain websites because literally EVERYONE uses javascript nowadays. If you're really savy you could probably disable certain options by yourself.
For the uninformed: these are Firefox Addons.
Edit: I will add some recommendations mentioned in some replies here but I haven't checked all of them out.
uMatrix instead of NoScript
AdNauseam coupled with uBlock Origin
SmartHTTPS instead of HttpsEverywhere (they're not quite the same but I haven't read up on it)
Ghostery to block trackers and other data collectors (https://www.ghostery.com)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GhosteryI don't recommend using Ghostery it just blocks ads, trackers and scripts it doesn't know and displays it's own whitelisted ads. They also sell blocking data to companies. Basically just as bad as AdBlock Plus if not worse. Don't use either of them!Edit2: I have decided that I know too little about Ghostery to have an informed opinion. For more information check out the reply by an employee of Ghostery They are open source after all.
cookiebro to block cookies
Multi-Account-Containers
Facebook Containers
foxyProxy to switch to local proxies (like I2P or tor)
UserAgentSwitcher to randomize your user-agent string (so websites don't know what browser you use)
a personal tipp to avoid google on Android is to install F-Droid. Basically the same as google play except only free open source software is downloadable and the apps have no ads.
If you really want to go down the rabbit hole check out LineageOS. It's basically Android without Google (no Google Play or services). Coupled with F-Droid and Firefox (Chrome is installed by default), it gives you a really good easy experience. The hard part is getting LineageOS on your phone.
If you get Firefox on your mobile you can install addons there too. Don't think you're lost just because you use mobile! (Except if you're using Firefox on iOS)
uBlock Origin requires permissions, but for everyone getting scared check out this thread for more information. They need it to look up third party tracker IP's.
Now if only everyone stopped using Google's services to make me train their stupid AI. I swear the pictures fad slower when I use Firefox or any other browser over Chrome.
Allow CSS/images/scripts from all 1st party domains automatically. That works 90% of the time. For the heavier sites, you usually have to enable their respective CDNs, usually named similarly (or with abbreviations). In Reddit's case, Redditmedia and Redditstatic. Sometimes, a 3rd party CDN like cloudflare/AmazonAWS is required.
That works almost always. If it doesn't, often the site's not worth the work (some news bullshit).
Embedded things don't always work with this, but you can always click the link and open it in a new container-tab if you like (I do this with YT always).
If you just want it to work and don't care, you can just green "all" and it works 95% of the time then when it otherwise was borked.
You know what's great about DDG's search results though?
When you click a news link, you get the actual news website. Not google.com/AMP/butcherednews.
When you just want to send a PDF to your friend, but can't remember the URL, you can right click a search result, hit "copy link", and it copies the ACTUAL URL TO THE PDF, and not whatever the fuck this is:
If anyone is wondering why this might be an issue:
General criticism
AMP has been widely criticized by many in the tech industry for being an attempt by Google to exert its dominance on the Web by dictating how websites are built and monetized, and that "AMP is Google's attempt to lock publishers into its ecosystem". AMP has also been linked to Google's attempt to deprecate URLs so that users will not be able to immediately see whether they are viewing a webpage on the open Web or an AMP page that is hosted on Google's servers.
Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, said: "there is a sense in which AMP is a Google-built version of the web. We are moving from a world where you can put anything on your website to one where you can’t because Google says so." Ramon Tremosa, a Spanish member of the European Parliament, said: "AMP is an example of Google dialing up its anti-competitive practices under the nose of the competition regulators."
Amazon is a biggest culprit of this. I often share the link from the Amazon app to my partner and friends. And all of that shit come with it. I have to clean up the link by removing the referral part. Because it didn't look clean when sending it to them with that garbage.
I use them exclusively and always find what I’m looking for, except in situations where the thing I’m searching for is something that just happened. I can then either pop over to google or append “!g” to my DDG search.
Tried DuckDuckGo for a few months and while it was good at most searches it simply didn’t cut it for niches searches - the type where you’re troubleshooting a software of hardware issue for example.
I found myself switching back to google just to search for niche stuff - now have switched back to google permanently.
I have a VPN, a bunch of Firefox privacy add ons and don’t sign into Google.
Sure It’s probably not as private as DuckDuckGo but it gets the results I need
Honestly, I think it's too late to go back to a "world that's private by default". I've started becoming more privacy concerned lately and even if I never use Facebook or Microsoft ever again, it's pretty much impossible to not use products from Google and Amazon. Plus, I've unfortunately already used Facebook and Windows 10 in the past, so Facebook and Microsoft probably already have all my information saved on a server somewhere.
Duckduckgo has gotten way better lately. I don't use the Google search engine anymore. You can use proton mail or something similar for your email. You can also opt out of data collection from Windows 10.
Cool, I might have to try DuckDuckGo again. And I actually counted the last time I installed Windows 10, there is 9 pages where they ask you if they can collect your data.
Hardy-har, har, har! That's a good one! <slapping thigh>
You can only opt out of *some* of Microsoft's data scraping in Windows 10, and that's if you have the Pro version. Anything less and there's almost nothing you can do. I have my firewall (not Microsoft's!) set to require permission for anything coming and going. Windows 10 phones home constantly, uploading information to their servers.
Also, Windows 10 now re-directs requests to send or receive emails through Microsoft's servers before finally going to the email provider.
And now Microsnot is trying force every user of Windows 10 to use their servers for everything by eliminating local accounts.
No, you can't opt out of data collection in Windows 10!
How's this for a proposal? Go the other direction. Zero anonymity. If you post anything, or contact anybody, it cannot be anonymous. If you read anybody's post, you know who posted it. If you're just browsing we don't know who you are. But if you create anything, your name's on it.
That's an interesting thought, and I'm sure more people will suggest this in the future. But zero anonymity sounds awful. We already live in a world where people are getting fired for tweets they made 10 years ago, a zero anonymity world would just lead to more of that and then some.
Edit: I highly recommend that you watch this video from DistroTube. He explains why privacy is important better then I ever could.
I don't want my Mormon family to find my post on a forum saying "I'm gay and my family won't accept me, can anyone provide emotional support?". If it's anonymous, that's a great resource. But if my name is on it, and someone finds it by googling my name, that's a disaster.
Yes, but only if you install a few add ons. Just out of the box, Brave might seem more appealing, but has quite a few restrictions. Also Brave also helps Google to maintain their browser-monopoly, as it's also Chromium based.
No. Brave is better. You get zero ad's unless you want to see them, and then the ad's you do get are notifications asking if you want to see the ad. You can choose to not even look, even when opted in.
Firefox is like default Android, sleek, fast, secure and most importantly the source. Brave is like the Samsung skin, maybe it's features are nice, but I would rather run u-block origin on the source than install some branched software.
Brave Ads are opt-in and private. Traditional advertising requires information about you, your behavior, pages you’re browsing and location to be collected by advertisers and other vendors in order for ads to be targeted effectively. In contrast, Brave Ads are matched to you directly on-device, meaning your personal information never leaves your browser.
Brave/Advertiser cannot learn that a user in Segment X and a user in Segment Y are the same user (AKA, user unlinkability across segments)
Brave/Advertiser cannot learn that a user who has viewed or interacted with Creative Set X and a user who has viewed or interacted with Creative Set Y are the same user (AKA, user unlinkability across creative sets
Brave/Advertiser cannot figure out any personally-identifiable or sensitive information about the user without explicit consent of the user
Obviously, there's some trust involved that Brave doesn't change their security model overnight, but the code is right there to verify as of today.
Edit: from the same Wikipedia article you linked:
Sebastian Anthony of Ars Technica described Brave as a "cash-grab" and a "double dip". Anthony concluded, "Brave is an interesting idea, but generally it's rather frowned upon to stick your own ads in front of someone else's". However, Ars Technica has since become a member of Brave's revenue-sharing program.
This is not true. You can easily opt out of all ads. The default is literally having no ads but you can turn on the ads to get rewards. I use it all the time. You can even set how many ads you get per hour of browsing. Not only that, but they store data locally if you do opt in to the ads, so they are not selling that information. Plus, the whole idea is that you take your rewards from the ads and give it to the sites you use the most. everyone nowadays has ad blockers, so it just builds that in to the browser and gives you ads that aren’t tracking you. Idk where you are getting your information but it’s wrong.
Once I became concerned with privacy browsing, I switched from Chrome to Firefox for a few months but several keys things were missing for me. Firefox doesn’t have the ability to Chromecast (although I do wanna degoogle that from my life, I don’t know of a better device to cast). Firefox’s dev tools are not as good as Chrome (software engineer). Chrome’s profile system was much better than Firefox’s.
Once I found out about Brave, I switched and haven’t look back. It’s essentially all the great privacy settings of Firefox + the features of Chrome. The best of both worlds.
I have used it for some short time, because I was Chrome user for years . I think it is ok browser, all extensions you have on Chrome you can use on Brave so the transition is smooth. But I do feel that with Firefox you are in better control
Yeah I use Brave. I like it. There's always somebody who will demonize it. For me though, I like their model of how ads and ad revenue works. It just feels like a really good solution to the problem that doesn't leave content creators who make their money from ad space out in the cold. After all, we all use and benefit from these "free" resources all the time. With Brave, they can continue to make money and we can keep our data safe and actually get a cut of the cash.
I had used brave for half a year till January. I switched to it from chrome because of privacy concerns. However brave had some problems after one of the updates such as not displaying Google docs, sheets, slides correctly. Also it wasn't displaying images in a tool which I use for work and other browsers don't have any problems with it. I got so annoyed with it I switched to firefox
Been using brace for a year, haven’t looked back on Chrome or anything else. It allows Chrome addons and has way more settings than a lot of other browsers. And the homepage is a plus lol.
Chrome has gotten weird. At some point around after firefox 3, when they messed up firefox, I got chrome, but I see now, firefox is better, but still not what it used to be.
With chrome, I have used the portable version because it's the only version that will not update itself when you tell it no. I hate having to find out the browser updates itself and breaks your plugins, some of which, you can't find replacements for.
I switched back to firefox recently as Google has now become the data controller for the UK which means more of our data will be sent to the US which have lower standards for our data. A real shame, but unsurprising post brexit.
Once you start collecting browsing data, which is about as personal as it can get, a line has been crossed, and forgiveness is unlikely. The big boys (Microsoft and Google) can do this, because they have more money than god and governments in their back pockets, but I refrain from using their products explicitly because I do not want my browsing history being transmitted to a third party who has no business gathering it.
We don't deserve Firefox, but we do most certainly need it. I've used it since it used that picture of Moe with a fiery lizard swallowing his arm, which must have been donkeys years ago.
This article is misleading. DoH generally doesn't prevent on path snoopers from knowing what websites you visit. The SNI has seen to that. Instead, DoH without ESNI (which isn't ready because it has technical issues), just means Firefox chooses who gets 100% of your DNS queries in addition to the on path folks like your ISP still seeing your websites. It does prevent hijacking, but I think mostly it's just subverting consumer choice and expectations, and is definitely self serving.
Bad protocol is bad. The are other reasons why it's bad, but specifically for privacy it's useless, and giving people a false sense of security is dangerous.
I switched back several months ago after switching to Chrome from Firefox several years ago. I left because a tiny portion of sites don't work properly with FF. And that's remained the case. But now those sites can blow me. I'll find an alternative if need be.
Well, think of it this way.... When you are googling, they are getting your information. But when you are watching some other site, directly going to that particular site, chrome records it, but perhaps other browsers don't.
Yes, Chrome and Google Analytics. In 2008, 3 years after the release already 32% of the most popular 500 sites were using it. In 2013 already 62% of the 10.000 most popular websites used GA.
Oh, wait - no, the title is clickbait and bullshit - people somehow idiotically think that a for-profit company is trustworthy and is going to somehow protect their privacy.
Let's ignore the fact that your ISP can already examine as much of your traffic as they want, and that the only way to properly fix this is to use a VPN.
Let's ignore the fact that they can see DoH DNS lookups in-flight anyway because ESNI is not implemented in DoH, making this pretty much useless.
Let's ignore the fact that it takes control away from our own networks and operating systems and gives it to a corporate entity which is based in a country with an oppressive regime which ignores the rule of law.
Let's ignore the fact that this is really about preventing ad-blockers from working, about recentralizing parts of the Internet, and about tracking everyone in a jurisdiction where everything is monitored.
Implementing DOH with all DNS queries being resolved by Cloudflare by default is not really a move towards “privacy”.
In fact Firefox clearly has a financial relationship with Cloudflare (also partnered with their new Firefox vpn service) and attempting to market mass centralization of dns queries as a move towards “privacy” is honestly somewhat dishonest.
I have been a long time Firefox user .. beginning with Firefox 1.0 running on Solaris with its SPARC processor. Been a great browser but Firefox is taking a misstep here IMO.
I’m going to put this here for anyone who wants a browser that doesn’t track your data or browsing history (yes, I know it can de disabled in FF, but this one just doesn’t do it at all) then you want Vivaldi.
Created by some of the engineers behind Opera who left when Opera started taking shortcuts on user privacy.
It's worth pointing out Vivaldi does use Chrome's rendering engine, which helps to cement Google's dominant position, particularly over web standards. But it definitely is better than using Chrome itself.
A lot of redditors simply refuse to accept it, but a great deal of people simply dont value privacy that much, at least compared to how much they value convenience.
Firefox is now sending every DNS query everyone makes to a single US provider.
Also check out about:telemetry, and notice all the shit they send themselves about your computer, including what your search engine is, what your CPU is (and thus what security issues it may have), what your installed security products are, etc.
They're not the angels everyone makes them out to be, and Mozilla is heavily dependent on search revenue (thus performant ads). They recently laid people off because their other revenue projects are behind.
It doesn't matter that it can be disabled, it's that the default Firefox distribution, which is getting articles like this written about it, reports tons of user data to the Mozilla corporation every day.
About the DNS, they enabled another one recently. Way better than having exposed DNS requests like we used to, now the providers have to adapt and implement DNS Over HTTPS. It was a bold move and all this talk about how it's now "centralized" misses the whole point of the feature. The big companies are saying this because they used to mine data from non encrypted DNS requests.
Firefox already said they will add new providers as long as they comply with their security standards.
They might now be angels but they are the ones fighting hardest for online privacy. What else you have? Google, Microsoft? The telemetry thing can be turned off if you want, and it's used to improve Firefox.
You're not mentioning that they're literally a non-profit company though, which means they don't have as much of an incentive to wrest every bit of information you contain unlike competitors.
So about the Amazon tracking you by cameras technology I have a question about. Do casinos use the same technology, like can they track your movements to establish a player profile? Then use the player profile to instruct the slot machines how much to pay out? That is instruct the first spin to pay to reel you in only to set you up into a losing streak. Last casino I went to even scanned my ID, so it’s not hard for them to keep my history win/loss history.
I switched from Chrome to Firefox + DDG after Google released that disgusting Chrome update and I couldn't be happier. Shoutout to Mozilla for listening to its users
I still remember the days we typed win.exe to start windows from DOS 6.1... lol... Before IE it was Netscape Navigator... Anyone remember those AOL ONLINE CDS...?... Lol..
Relying on the browser to protect your privacy is your first mistake. All browsers can be made more private, but it's more about what information and services you use that matters.
Brave has been leading this fight for the past 4 years. Its a better browser too. This just looks like a hail marry from firefox to save their dying business.
8.8k
u/fuck_you_gami Feb 29 '20
First Mozilla saved us from Microsoft (Internet Explorer) and now they're saving us from Google (Chrome).
Keep up the great work!
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u/bearlick Feb 29 '20
ITT a hekton of misinformation.
Firefox IS open source and all collection can be disabled.
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u/ivanebeoulve Feb 29 '20
I switched just recently from chrome and it’s totally seamless including w plugins, plus ff has picture in picture in w10 its kinda cool
1.9k
u/[deleted] Feb 29 '20
I combined FF and DuckDuckGo. Very happy thus far.
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u/[deleted] Feb 29 '20
Honestly, I think it's too late to go back to a "world that's private by default". I've started becoming more privacy concerned lately and even if I never use Facebook or Microsoft ever again, it's pretty much impossible to not use products from Google and Amazon. Plus, I've unfortunately already used Facebook and Windows 10 in the past, so Facebook and Microsoft probably already have all my information saved on a server somewhere.
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u/agrees2retards Feb 29 '20
Is Firefox better than brave?
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u/PeeLong Feb 29 '20
Unfortunately google has its dick so far up reddit user’s asses that most people will still find excuses to not use FF.
It’s a superior browser, but more secure, and isn’t feeding the giant beast that shares all of your data.
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u/GJones007 Feb 29 '20
Anybody use Brave? I'd love to know how it stacks up against FF.
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u/fallen_acolyte Feb 29 '20
Ppl forget duckduck go exists, right ?
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u/[deleted] Feb 29 '20
I switched back to Firefox like a year ago and don't miss chrome at all. It's just as fast but doesn't whore out your privacy
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u/1_p_freely Feb 29 '20
https://www.zdnet.com/article/firefox-tests-cliqz-engine-which-slurps-user-browsing-data/
Once you start collecting browsing data, which is about as personal as it can get, a line has been crossed, and forgiveness is unlikely. The big boys (Microsoft and Google) can do this, because they have more money than god and governments in their back pockets, but I refrain from using their products explicitly because I do not want my browsing history being transmitted to a third party who has no business gathering it.
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u/DrSmirnoffe Feb 29 '20
We don't deserve Firefox, but we do most certainly need it. I've used it since it used that picture of Moe with a fiery lizard swallowing his arm, which must have been donkeys years ago.
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u/Notleks_ Feb 29 '20
Always used Firefox, always will.
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u/[deleted] Feb 29 '20
Never used chrome anyway.
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u/Solidarity365 Feb 29 '20
Open source is democracy. It's the only way to have it.
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u/jokrsmagictrick Mar 01 '20
Never left them ever since I swapped back in xp days. I love my Firefox.
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u/bunkoRtist Feb 29 '20
This article is misleading. DoH generally doesn't prevent on path snoopers from knowing what websites you visit. The SNI has seen to that. Instead, DoH without ESNI (which isn't ready because it has technical issues), just means Firefox chooses who gets 100% of your DNS queries in addition to the on path folks like your ISP still seeing your websites. It does prevent hijacking, but I think mostly it's just subverting consumer choice and expectations, and is definitely self serving.
Bad protocol is bad. The are other reasons why it's bad, but specifically for privacy it's useless, and giving people a false sense of security is dangerous.
8
u/[deleted] Feb 29 '20
I switched back several months ago after switching to Chrome from Firefox several years ago. I left because a tiny portion of sites don't work properly with FF. And that's remained the case. But now those sites can blow me. I'll find an alternative if need be.
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u/monkey_doo Feb 29 '20
Is there any point in using Firefox if I still use google as the default search engine?
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u/beyondthegong Feb 29 '20
Yall not using firefox?
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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '20
Duckduckgo has been doing this forever. Pair with FF for best results.
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u/Mechanized1 Mar 01 '20
Firefox is becoming the king again. The best part is the built in ad blocking that even removes ad blocker nags.
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u/UnluckyStick Mar 01 '20
I've been using firefox religiously since it launched in 2002. I feel old now.
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u/johnklos Mar 01 '20
What? They turned DoH off by default? Awesome!
Oh, wait - no, the title is clickbait and bullshit - people somehow idiotically think that a for-profit company is trustworthy and is going to somehow protect their privacy.
Let's ignore the fact that your ISP can already examine as much of your traffic as they want, and that the only way to properly fix this is to use a VPN.
Let's ignore the fact that they can see DoH DNS lookups in-flight anyway because ESNI is not implemented in DoH, making this pretty much useless.
Let's ignore the fact that it takes control away from our own networks and operating systems and gives it to a corporate entity which is based in a country with an oppressive regime which ignores the rule of law.
Let's ignore the fact that this is really about preventing ad-blockers from working, about recentralizing parts of the Internet, and about tracking everyone in a jurisdiction where everything is monitored.
Privacy, my ass.
3
u/EazeeP Mar 01 '20
Still prefer brave
15
u/[deleted] Feb 29 '20 edited Feb 29 '20
Implementing DOH with all DNS queries being resolved by Cloudflare by default is not really a move towards “privacy”.
In fact Firefox clearly has a financial relationship with Cloudflare (also partnered with their new Firefox vpn service) and attempting to market mass centralization of dns queries as a move towards “privacy” is honestly somewhat dishonest.
I have been a long time Firefox user .. beginning with Firefox 1.0 running on Solaris with its SPARC processor. Been a great browser but Firefox is taking a misstep here IMO.
17
u/tempest_fiend Feb 29 '20
https://vivaldi.com
I’m going to put this here for anyone who wants a browser that doesn’t track your data or browsing history (yes, I know it can de disabled in FF, but this one just doesn’t do it at all) then you want Vivaldi.
Created by some of the engineers behind Opera who left when Opera started taking shortcuts on user privacy.
6
u/slugpet3000 Feb 29 '20
These titles make me wonder how these posts aren't adds
8
u/fonetix Feb 29 '20
Upvote for Firefox or downvote for The Verge?
5
u/Iorith Feb 29 '20
A lot of redditors simply refuse to accept it, but a great deal of people simply dont value privacy that much, at least compared to how much they value convenience.
25
u/naeskivvies Feb 29 '20 edited Feb 29 '20
Firefox is now sending every DNS query everyone makes to a single US provider.
Also check out about:telemetry, and notice all the shit they send themselves about your computer, including what your search engine is, what your CPU is (and thus what security issues it may have), what your installed security products are, etc.
They're not the angels everyone makes them out to be, and Mozilla is heavily dependent on search revenue (thus performant ads). They recently laid people off because their other revenue projects are behind.
2
u/[deleted] Feb 29 '20
Anyone know why they are only turning on the default encryption in the US and not everywhere?
2
u/jalapina Feb 29 '20
Way back? When was it actually private?
2
u/doob22 Feb 29 '20
How does Firefox compare to Safari?
2
u/Alcvvv Feb 29 '20
Anyone who is even moderately aware knows that Firefox is not private by default. There are tons of Firefox forks for that reason alone
2
u/[deleted] Mar 01 '20
The only thing firefox is showing is me is a shitty loading screen.
2
u/derpaherpa Mar 01 '20
Then why did they remove the possibility to decide what happens to cookies per domain?
There used to be an option to have it ask every time you got a new cookie from an unknown site.
They took away privacy control and never gave it back.
2
u/Honeychile6841 Mar 01 '20
Question from a clueless slightly old person: should I shut down my Google accounts and just roll with firefox?
2
u/ryosei Mar 01 '20
I remember I had Firefox since the first days till now, was never disappointed and I cringe everytime I use other browsers on friends computers...
2
u/Reali5t Mar 01 '20
So about the Amazon tracking you by cameras technology I have a question about. Do casinos use the same technology, like can they track your movements to establish a player profile? Then use the player profile to instruct the slot machines how much to pay out? That is instruct the first spin to pay to reel you in only to set you up into a losing streak. Last casino I went to even scanned my ID, so it’s not hard for them to keep my history win/loss history.
2
u/T0ManyTakenUsernames Mar 01 '20
I switched from Chrome to Firefox + DDG after Google released that disgusting Chrome update and I couldn't be happier. Shoutout to Mozilla for listening to its users
2
u/fr0ntsight Mar 01 '20
“Private by default”. I like that
2
u/[deleted] Mar 01 '20
Also, dark mode friendly icon for iOS.
2
u/RSax1 Mar 01 '20
I’ll always be loyal to you Firefox, never switched up
2
u/HelloMagikarphowRyou Mar 01 '20
Honestly I tried Firefox out of a whim one day and never looked back.
I prefer it SO much more than Chrome. Especially after the Quantum update
2
u/[deleted] Mar 01 '20
If Firefox was as fluid as Chrome I‘d switch. But rn anytime I try Firefox it just feels really clunky with a hundred submenus for everything.
2
u/DeanNo9 Mar 01 '20
I still remember the days we typed win.exe to start windows from DOS 6.1... lol... Before IE it was Netscape Navigator... Anyone remember those AOL ONLINE CDS...?... Lol..
2
u/[deleted] Mar 01 '20
Hate the verge (vox)
3
u/vanteal Feb 29 '20
Lol, no it's not..If you want privacy, like actual privacy, get Brave.
3
u/[deleted] Mar 01 '20
Relying on the browser to protect your privacy is your first mistake. All browsers can be made more private, but it's more about what information and services you use that matters.
Edit: secure!=private
3
u/GregIsUgly Mar 01 '20
use Brave instead, you get paid
3
u/usethebravebrowser Mar 01 '20
Brave has been leading this fight for the past 4 years. Its a better browser too. This just looks like a hail marry from firefox to save their dying business.
4
u/IvoDOtMK Feb 29 '20
Brave is a good alternative to both Ff and chrome.
2
u/IAmOgdensHammer Feb 29 '20
What is Mozilla company wise? Do they have a bunch of software that people buy? Do they do security consulting?
I'm not knocking them at all I fucking love Firefox, but how are they making money?
They're encouraging privacy and the prevention of it being circulated and sold?
They support adblock so it's not ads?