NYT: 'Firefox Is Back. It's Time to Give It a Try.' (nytimes.com) 355
Another high-profile endorsement for Firefox -- this time from the lead consumer technology writer for The New York Times. (Alternate link here).
The web has reached a new low. It has become an annoying, often toxic and occasionally unsafe place to hang out. More important, it has become an unfair trade: You give up your privacy online, and what you get in return are somewhat convenient services and hyper-targeted ads. That's why it may be time to try a different browser.
Remember Firefox...? About two years ago, six Mozilla employees were huddled around a bonfire one night in Santa Cruz, Calif., when they began discussing the state of web browsers. Eventually, they concluded there was a "crisis of confidence" in the web. "If they don't trust the web, they won't use the web," Mark Mayo, Mozilla's chief product officer, said in an interview.... After testing Firefox for the last three months, I found it to be on a par with Chrome in most categories. In the end, Firefox's thoughtful privacy features persuaded me to make the switch and make it my primary browser.
The Times cites privacy features like Firefox's "Facebook Container," which prevents Facebook from tracking you after you've left their site.
While both Chrome and Firefox have tough security (including sandboxing), Cooper Quintin, a security researcher for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, tells the Times that Google "is fundamentally an advertising company, so it's unlikely that they will ever have a business interest in making Chrome more privacy friendly."
Remember Firefox...? About two years ago, six Mozilla employees were huddled around a bonfire one night in Santa Cruz, Calif., when they began discussing the state of web browsers. Eventually, they concluded there was a "crisis of confidence" in the web. "If they don't trust the web, they won't use the web," Mark Mayo, Mozilla's chief product officer, said in an interview.... After testing Firefox for the last three months, I found it to be on a par with Chrome in most categories. In the end, Firefox's thoughtful privacy features persuaded me to make the switch and make it my primary browser.
The Times cites privacy features like Firefox's "Facebook Container," which prevents Facebook from tracking you after you've left their site.
While both Chrome and Firefox have tough security (including sandboxing), Cooper Quintin, a security researcher for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, tells the Times that Google "is fundamentally an advertising company, so it's unlikely that they will ever have a business interest in making Chrome more privacy friendly."
Firefox? Never left it. (Score:2)
Every time I see the sheer quantity of chrome or google processes on a PC, I cringe. Why does chrome need 4 processes before it displays a home/start page? Why does google schedule update checks once at logon and then *every hour*?
Everytime I run a perforamance tuneup on someone's PC, the first place I check is Windows Task Scheduler. Change the frequency of google's updates back to once per day, and NOT at logon. Ditto Adobe's products, and a bunch of Microsoft updates/uploads/telemetry.
Re:Firefox? Never left it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does chrome need 4 processes before it displays a home/start page?
Why do you care? If anything it will ensure a single process doesn't bring down the browser. Then you also get speed increases for non-threaded workloads on multicore CPUs.
In other news MySQL is currently using 33 processes on my machine processing a grand total of zero requests for zero users with zero CPU time. Are you running out of numbers to assign processes or something?
Why does google schedule update checks once at logon and then *every hour*?
Why wouldn't it? Google's threat and malware database is being continuously updated. Are you on a 28.8k modem where you can't spare the couple of kilobyte to do a web request to check if any components of your system's security have an update?
Change the frequency of google's updates back to once per day, and NOT at logon.
Why are you sacrafacing other people's security for no performance gain? Or are you trying to "tune" up computers that are too slow to fire up a process and run a web request? Maybe they should consider browsing the internet on a computer instead of a TI-84.
Ditto Adobe's products
Ditto the above. Adobe's update service uses less than 1MB of RAM and 0% CPU time while it exists. If you're getting a "performance tuneup" as a result of disabling it then maybe it's time to throw the old 486 away.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Not everyone has the latest and greatest hardware, or a decent, let alone high-speed internet connection. 1.5MBit/s is common around here. Nor - like a lot of my retired customers - do they have the money for the latest and greatest. I haven't seen a 486 for a while, but core2duos with Vista are still common. Do I tell them to upgrade? Sure I do. But they're mostly pensioners and have better things to spend the money on. I also tell them what will happen if malware gets in. Then I do a performance tuneup as
Re: (Score:3)
so many programs think they need to do it at logon - while the owner waits, staring at a spinning hourglass.
you clearly missed the absurdity of disabling something that uses effectively no resources for "performance gains".
You claim that the dozen updaters that run every time the user logs in are "something that uses effectively no resources". I doubt this claim. This goes double for Windows, on which it's common practice for Windows Defender or some other real-time virus scanner to scan every executable every time it runs.
To resolve this, I'm interested in benchmarks of the most common automatic updaters on the decade-old yet paid-for PCs that pensioners have, many of which have a Core 2 Duo CPU and a conventional HDD. Data
Re: (Score:2)
You don't need to doubt the claim. You can actually *measure* it using the startup optimisation
You made the claims
1. for no performance gain
2. that uses effectively no resources for "performance gains"
The burden of proof is on you to measure and report. Ideally find a disinterested third party's already measured data, but I am not too hopeful.
Re:Firefox? Never left it. (Score:5, Informative)
Why does chrome need 4 processes before it displays a home/start page?
It's been a few years since I looked, but as I recall:
For something that deals with as much untrusted data and code as a web browser, I'd want it to be compartmentalised as much as possible.
Re: Firefox? Never left it. (Score:3)
Thanks. It's good to keep learning new things. Now I've got a bit more knowledge to help me make decisions. Cheers
Re: (Score:3)
What's more, folks are going on like processes are intrinsically expensive.
If most of them are idle and the IPC is not super chatty, it's not a huge burden on system resources.
On Windows, starting a process is expensive (Score:5, Interesting)
What's more, folks are going on like processes are intrinsically expensive.
On Windows, starting a process is expensive for two reasons: spawn semantics instead of fork semantics, and the common practice of real-time antivirus. On any system, RAM owned by a process and not shared with other processes is expensive, particularly if it causes cached disk sectors to get evicted to make room or (worse) leads to swapping.
Re: (Score:2)
Hysterically funny. What actually happens is that Chrome will happily use up all your memory, then crash your computer. Or turn it into a dog.
On my computer, Pale Moon uses about 4 times less memory than Chrome.
Google must get kick backs from RAM providers; Wintel version 2.
might be a valid strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
This might be a valid strategy for Firefox future. They destroyed their original advantage of powerful extensions, so they need something new to attract people. Privacy focus just might be it, but if so they really need to emphasize it in their advertising. At least Chrome is unlikely to truly compete with them in this field.
Re: (Score:3)
Most of the useful extensions are back, only a few aren't.
But I miss the alternative of creating a new container window instead of a tab. And each window type should be a clean slate with its own set of bookmarks.
Re:might be a valid strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
They destroyed their original advantage of powerful extensions
No they haven't. They did a necessary change in architecture which killed off anything using the old API. They've been working hard to make the new, more secure and (importantly) concurrent system up to scratch.
And they've more or less succeeded. Even pretty intrusive extensions like NoScript work just fine now. Even better is that extensions have a good chance of working on firefox mobile as well as desktop so I get noscript on my phone as well.
Bug 1325692 (Score:3)
They've been working hard to make the new, more secure and (importantly) concurrent system up to scratch.
Let me know when this hard work results in enough functionality in the system to allow a WebExtension counterpart to the defunct Keybinder extension [github.com], even if only for disabling accidental presses Ctrl+Q or Ctrl+Shift+Q for quit when I was aiming for Ctrl+Tab or Ctrl+Shift+Tab. (No, Restore Previous Session didn't restore text entered into a Slashdot comment composition form last I checked.) That's reportedly waiting on a fix for long-standing bug 1325692 [mozilla.org].
They've been running that angle for years (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
That's not surprising. All but a few people have low IQs.
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Whatever you do, don't buy yourself a boomerang, because you've yet to even pass the basic pendulum test.
It's human nature to overreact to the most recent catastrophe.
Did you sleep all the way through the Facebook privacy catastrophe 2016–2018? For 50.1% of the American population, what we are now living through is an ongoing catastrophe.
Half the parents in American are now going "hey, kids, look at that pompous know-nothing bozo blowhard—w
Re: (Score:2)
what we are now living through is an ongoing catastrophe.
I know, I see the Facebook posts about it. From the #deletefacbook movement we have officially reached peak-missing-the-point.
By the way half of America* has a short attention spam. They are too busy worrying about crying babies on the border to even remember why Facebook was in the news.
*Nearly all of America.
It (barely) kept me with Mozilla (Score:5, Insightful)
"If they don't trust ..., they won't use ..." (Score:5, Insightful)
Techno-anarchist delusions. People don't trust Facebook, and yet still use it by the billions...
Re: (Score:2)
This. If there's one thing that's clear these days it's that people don't give a crap about their privacy providing that someone doesn't look in their window and get a peek of their nipple or penis.
4 out of 5? (Score:2)
Re: 4 out of 5? (Score:2)
It uses the renderer which is the part everyone likes.
Re: (Score:2)
and the ui engine.
Browsers like opera, vivaldi and many more are just chromium, but the default ui disabled and another one implemented using the same building blocks chromium is using. Then they add features on top of the construct.
Facebook Container (Score:3)
That Facebook container is golden. I wish Firefox would take it even further, though. The other day, I was browsing for a new monitor. Then what do you know, I open the desktop Spotify client (free tier) and there's an ad for the same monitor. I really, really hate this shit but I don't know what to do against this tracking. I already use uBlock Origin in Firefox.
Re:Facebook Container (Score:5, Interesting)
I already use uBlock Origin in Firefox.
It might not solve the problem in your particular case, but also turn on Firefox's built-in tracking protection [mozilla.org] (set it to "always" to have it on all the time). It runs after any blocker add-ons and it blocks some stuff uBlock Origin misses.
Re: (Score:2)
uBlock Origin, Noscript, Cookie Autodelete, Lightbeam for me.
Some sites do look a bit wonky though, but not too bad.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
That's just modern web design.
FF was ditched for the same reasons as Netscape (Score:5, Informative)
Firefox was ditched for the same set of reasons that Netscape was ditched:
- Both Firefox and Netscape had become or were perceived as slow and bloated compared to the competition. I vividly remember my eye twitching back in the late 90s during my phone tech support days when I heard a fellow phone jockey recommend Internet Explorer 3 to a customer over Netscape because it was 'so much faster'. This was back in the 28.8/56k dial-up era, so take that into account. Chrome is widely perceived to be faster and more powerful at running webapps than Firefox... and regardless of the reality, this perception goes top to bottom. Developers frequently choose to develop against Chrome and then test against Firefox... if they bother to test against Firefox.
- Privacy, browser configuration, and Internet safety are widely perceived to be 'too difficult'. This was as true in the 90s as it is today. People are intimidated by the reality of what it takes to be safe and private on the Internet and/or far too lazy to learn to configure their browser. Netscape and Mozilla have never quite made it as easy to 'click click click dubya dubya dubya' as their competition. Microsoft and Google both are much better at hand-holding... and leading their 'customers' down the garden path. Installing ad or script blockers *seems* more intimidating on Firefox than similar plugins for Chrome because Google has successfully 'App-Store-Ized' their plugin ecosystem.
- Netscape and Firefox have never been 'The Internet'. Microsoft did its damndest to make sure that Windows users all directly equated that blue 'e' icon with 'The Internet'. Google is its own damn verb. Both companies' marketing divisions have made very good pushes to make themselves synonymous with 'The Internet'.
- Netscape and Mozilla have never had a strong pre-install base. Every Windows Install since 95 has come with IE. Every Android device comes with Chrome. Most folks simply can't be assed to install another browser. Sad but true. If Firefox ever wants to become really relevant, it's going to have to get some kind of mainstream pre-install base going. We're not talking Linux distros here. They're going to have to pull off the Firefox equivalent of an 'Android OS' or 'Chromebook'. It's doable, but Mozilla is not strongly steered the way Microsoft was or Google is. Moz has a long history of dropping the soap far too often.
Re: (Score:2)
- Netscape and Firefox have never been 'The Internet'. Microsoft did its damndest to make sure that Windows users all directly equated that blue 'e' icon with 'The Internet'. Google is its own damn verb. Both companies' marketing divisions have made very good pushes to make themselves synonymous with 'The Internet'.
What I used to do back in the day when installing and configuring computers for my non-tech-savvy relatives was to place a shortcut for Netscape/Firefox on their desktop, but with the blue "e" icon and just labeled "Internet". I would also configure the browser appropriately, and delete any easy way for them to find/launch Internet Explorer.
I stopped doing that after Internet Explorer acquired is terrible reputation...
I want my "disable Javascript" checkbox back (Score:5, Insightful)
Please, Mozilla. I never used any other browser. I won't ever, because I know that you're the Good Folks (TM).
But make it easy again to *completely switch off Javascript*. No "NoScript" plugin with cheap cop-outs. Help in keeping a small-but-significant javascript population out there to keep Web "programmers" and frameworks out there honest.
Yeah, I know: users are too stupid to manage this one checkbox, your telemetry proves it (and those now quaint instructions on how to enable Javascript some sites still carry, as a reminiscence of the 2005s). Know what? If you treat your users as idiots, you'll get idiot users. I know how this may be in Microsoft's or Google's interest, but I don't get how it is in yours.
I know, I know. Your perspective is too tightly intertwined with the ad industry's -- they wet-dream of a Javascript API to a brain implant which goes straight into the dopamine center, and you'll deliver because "the others are doing it and you else become irrelevant".
Sigh. I really love you. I want to. But sometimes I hate you.
Re: (Score:2)
But make it easy again to *completely switch off Javascript*. No "NoScript" plugin with cheap cop-outs.
What's wrong with NoScript? You can set it to block everything always.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
[sniff] Wish _I_ had a dopamine center brain implant :-(
Re: (Score:2)
Their 'this site doesn't work' page is just an overlay blocking the page's content.
Re:I want my "disable Javascript" checkbox back (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm more interested to know how many sites you can actually use without having Javascript?
That's the bigger problem. Javascript is a cancer that has infected and destroyed the entire Internet.
It used to be that you could disable Javacript and everything still, sort of, worked. Good enough to get by. But now, most websites don't work at all, i.e., you get nothing but a blank page or an error message if you disable Javacript.
Re: (Score:2)
More than half of your rant is just (valid) reasons for not bringing back the checkbox. Just disable it in about:config if you don't want it, I'm sure pretty much everyone that want's to do that can figure that out.
Apparently you haven't been paying attention. Mozilla disabled that a few years ago.
The setting is still there in about:config, and you can set Javascript to "disabled", but it has no effect.
Re: (Score:3)
The setting is still there in about:config, and you can set Javascript to "disabled", but it has no effect.
You might want to double-check that. Using Firefox 61, this page worked [w3schools.com] with JavaScript enabled. I went to about:config, I set javascript.enabled to "false", I reloaded the w3schools page, and the JavaScript aspects of the page no longer worked.
"New low" (Score:2)
Did they all collectively forget the "beware predators, don't share personal information online" perma-scare that we had before "toxic" became the new buzzword?
The internet was never safe, the only thing that changed is a bunch of people joined up who expected it to be. We wouldn't even be in this position had users not been convinced blurring their real and online identity was awesome right around when FB and Twitter showed up.
Developer Tools (Score:2)
I haven't used used Firefox in many years. Are its developer tools every bit as good as chrome is today? If not, switching is not a consideration (I don't want to use different browsers for normal use and development)
Re: (Score:3)
Then in your case I urge you to spend time with the dev-tools of FireFox. I think they are far superior to anything out there. I only use chrome/edge/ie-exploder dev-tools to de-bug those respective browsers, and only when necessary. Otherwise I live the good dev life in Firefox.
Also check out this really good add-on for maintaining multiple, simultaneous logins (identifiable via color-coded tabs): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-... [mozilla.org]
Re: Developer Tools (Score:2)
I recently switched to FF from Chrome and haven't noticed much difference.
Can there be too much privacy protection? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
That's a pretty horrendous attitude. Apps need to be brought to heel, not have the competing tech (Websites) dragged down to their level of lack of privacy/control.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't have a problem with opt-in permissions.
Even better would be if mobile apps and websites could ask for a list of essential and optional permissions. No installation or access if an essential permission is refused, but proceed with limited functionality if an optional permission is refused. At the moment app permissions are all take-it-or-leave-it.
Re: (Score:2)
while a good secure browser is important (Score:2)
even if you have a good secure browser if you go to places like facebook and other malicious websites and give them your personal info to make their profit from then the secure browser is pointless
Re: (Score:2)
Even if you opt into giving Facebook some information (e.e.g name,address, friend list) you may not want them to follow you everywhere on the web. There are valid reasons to give some sites some types of personal information. Insisting that people do all or nothing is part of the reason that FB et al can spy on its users throughout the web and have that considered okay, as opposed to overstepping what their users agreed to.
UI still sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
Not Really (Score:2)
After testing Firefox for the last three months, I found it to be on a par with Chrome in most categories. In the end, Firefox's thoughtful privacy features persuaded me to make the switch and make it my primary browser.
First, an update to make FF "new! better!" made FireFTP unable to run in FF. So had to find and use a separate app (WinSCP) to support FTP for my website development.
Next, FireBug got killed off in favor of an internal debugger that seemed buggy.
Finally the FF add-on (Kee) that communicates with my password manager (KeePass) won't install on my desktop.
So FF isn't an acceptable option for day-to-day use. I will often test new goodies I put on a website in FF, but if they don't work as expected I debug them
It gets a try again (Score:2)
When the support for old extensions is back.
So no more "women's projects" as a priority? (Score:3)
Because that is, as I understood, the problem they had in the first place. Politics over quality and skills and a lot of money put into projects that were not core business at a time where the core business was not in too good a shape.
Don't get me wrong, I have absolutely nothing against women as engineers. But engineers must be judged on skill, experience and capabilities, not their genetic makeup, skin color or preferences in beverages. Anything else can only cause massive problems.
I never left Firefox, but it frustrates me.. (Score:2)
Mainly thing just soaks up all of the memory of the computer. It isn't like I have hundreds of tabs either - maybe a dozen or so. But I can tell from task mananger that it is consuming virtually everything - minus a little bit to allow Windows to function.
As long as I am just using Firefox, it works OK, but to launch something else, I usually start by shutting down Firefox.
Re: I never left Firefox, but it frustrates me.. (Score:2)
Webpages are inefficient masses of the crappiest software built under the dumbest constraints. Using large amounts of memory is how you make them operate reasonably well. And humans are notoriously bad at understanding how much memory used is too much memory.
For me, it's about configurability... (Score:2)
Except for a year or so of trying Opera, FF has been my browser. Right up until the point a couple of years ago when I couldn't take it anymore. So much instability, performance problems, and the change for the sake of change being rammed down my browser. I tried Chromium (I'm on Linux) and I just didn't care for the way Chrome does some things. I then found Pale Moon, and I felt like I was back home with good-ol' FF. I've been using it since, on my home machine and at work (Win10). I can simplify the
OK.... just tried FF (Score:2)
Hate replying to my own post... but I thought I would try the new FF. I actually still had it on my machine, as Mint has been keeping it up to date.
First thing - backed up my bookmarks from Pale Moon to a json file.
Then tried unsuccessfully for about 10 minutes to FIND the bookmark restore in FF. It was hidden down in the Library > Bookmarks > Show all bookmarks. This is the kind of thing that FF implemented that drives me nuts. In Pale Moon it's under Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks. They impo
Sorry, but I don't buy it... (Score:5, Interesting)
However the core of Mozilla's problems is that they've spent many years more focused on moonshot projects like FirefoxOS and politics, which includes everything from firing their CTO as he was taking the role of CEO on purely political grounds to spending a considerable amount of money modifying the codebase to modify any functionality using Master/Slave naming to not use it. To make up for this shortfall in spending on actual browser development they've also gone ahead and tried to streamline development by removing features despite very vocal opposition from their userbase. Hell, this isn't even the first time they've tried copying what their competition is doing, the last time they did major changes to the UI those changes ended up only making Firefox look more like Chrome and their users naturally hated that because if they'd want to use Chrome, then they'd actually use Chrome.
No, the real fundamental problem Firefox has had for the last decade or so is simply unfocused and incompetent management. Until they can to a complete management "flush" and replace their management with people focused on the actual product rather than everything else, I can't see Firefox going anywhere in terms of it's already small market share.
I went back to Firefox... and left again (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is that if you close all but one tab/window and point the last window to "about:blank", memory doesn't come back. The browser isn't managing memory usage per page/tab/window, but collectively. Whether it's the Javascript engine or how the web pages use the heap is irrelevant. The bottom line is that the "leaks" stay with the browser until you restart the whole works. This has remained true even after the Quantum update that supposedly gives each tab/window its own process. I have no idea ho
the lead consumer technology writer for NYTimes... (Score:3)
Re: the lead consumer technology writer for NYTime (Score:5, Insightful)
Web designers should be the ones caring about their sites not rendering properly, not you. You should care about the quality of the content.
Re: (Score:3)
... You should care about the quality of the content....
It's difficult to care about content when I have trouble reading the content due to rendering issues. So, yes, I do care about rendering problems.
Chrome is a special snowflake (Score:2)
I switched to FF a couple months ago because I finally got sick of Chrome's wonky special and completely broken handling of scroll direction.
Use Firefox ESR (Score:2)
That way, you get a stable browser for a full year, that is widely supported on the internet and Big-Boy applications, and your browser is not changing:
Every Six months (Like Edge).
Every 3 months (Like Firefox mainstream)
Every 2 months (Like Chrome)
The new ESR 60 is Fingerlicking Good.
Stopping auto-play video brought me back (Score:3)
I had switched to Chrome because Firefox was...slow. But a few months ago, Firefox started making dramatic improvements in performance. But the most important feature that brought me back was the setting that lets you prevent videos from automatically playing. I wish they would make it not even load the video, but at least stopping the playback will do, until then.
FireFox Focus on my Android (Score:2)
It's an ad blocker, and erases cookies and history when closed,
https://play.google.com/store/... [google.com]
Here's what I do ... (Score:2)
I use FF in private window, using DuckDuckGo as the search engine, and FF is loaded up with NoScript, uBlock Origin, AdBlock, Facebook Container, NoMiner.
--
I religiously perform the following steps before and after using FF:
I run a batch file with the following commands ...
--
taskkill /f /im iexplore.exe /f /im firefox.exe /f /im chrome.exe /f /im MicrosoftEdge.exe /f /im MicrosoftEdgeCP.exe
taskkill
taskkill
taskkill
taskkill
RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 4351
cd\
cd C:\Program Files\CCleaner
ccle
Wrong approach? (Score:2)
> Firefox's "Facebook Container," which prevents Facebook from tracking you after you've left their site.
Why is this only implemented for FB? Why aren;t they sandboxing everything by default?
Less memory? (Score:2)
"Mozilla said the revamped Firefox consumes less memory than the competition, meaning you can fire up lots of tabs and browsing will still feel buttery smooth."
Unless the code for Facebook has changed significantly, I call bullshit on that statement!
I used to use the old Firefox (pre Quantum) with sometimes up to a hundred open tabs (one or more Facebook) and it it slowly built up to using about 2GB memory.
The new Firefox usually has about 3 open tabs, one of which is Facebook, and within hours it has eaten
Re: (Score:3)
I like some features, but chrome does a very good job
Call me when it has NoScript, etc.
Re:Strong Maybe? (Score:5, Informative)
Install uMatrix. Now you have "NoScript" and much more (uMatrix = NoScript + RequestPolicy)
Re:Strong Maybe? (Score:5, Informative)
"Good job" doing what? In whose interest? (Score:4, Interesting)
Google Chrome is said to have made it easy for an extension to do total snooping on the user's browsing [detectify.com], and many of them do so. Chrome includes a module that activates microphones and transmits audio to its servers [privateint...access.com], and Chrome contains a key logger that sends Google every URL typed in, one key at a time [favbrowser.com]. Google Chrome does a good job securing access to a user's data without telling the user what's really going on or giving the user a chance to stop the behavior they likely don't agree with.
Google Chrome is proprietary software. Nobody but Google has permission to study what Chrome does, alter Chrome, or distribute a modified Chrome. This is also how Google can get away with malware, hardly surprising behavior for a known international spy. As the GNU Project rightly points out [gnu.org]:
The New York Times called Google Chrome "secure" but didn't explain how they arrived at that conclusion. Regardless of what they meant by that claim, it's hard to see how any of the above behavior or whatever else Google can get away with via proprietary malware could reasonably be called 'secure'. Any feature Chrome offers has to be considered in the context of being implemented in proprietary software which by its nature imposes a power over its users.
Firefox was never proprietary; users could always inspect Firefox, edit out the portions of Firefox they didn't want to run or redistribute, edit any other part they wished, and distribute the rest (even if under another name with another logo), and Firefox derivatives have done just that many times. There's good reason Tor Browser, for instance, derives from Firefox. Free software (software that respect's a user's rights and community by allowing users to run, inspect, share, and modify the program) provides verifiable security; one need not guess or blindly trust a proprietor to do right by them. Firefox's technical achievements or detriments are thus a matter of spending time developing Firefox. This is a practical example of how you're better off with less technically capable free software than more technically capable proprietary software; we can make Firefox better in a technical sense but we can't make proprietary software free.
Re:"Good job" doing what? In whose interest? (Score:4, Interesting)
Google Chrome is said to have made it easy for an extension to do total snooping on the user's browsing, and many of them do so. Chrome includes a module that activates microphones and transmits audio to its servers, and Chrome contains a key logger that sends Google every URL typed in, one key at a time. Google Chrome does a good job securing access to a user's data without telling the user what's really going on or giving the user a chance to stop the behavior they likely don't agree with.
You're nuts. The first was a bug that a malicious hacker could use to make Chrome think an extension is corrupted and is long closed. The second is an opt-in extension to enable voice search that was downloaded but never enabled by default. And the third is just Google's autocomplete, which it obviously can't do unless it sends partially typed addresses to Google. Maybe it's not behavior you want - in which case it's possible to disable from the UI - but it's easy to see the moment you type something. If anybody thinks those suggestions appear by magic then it's a PEBCAK problem. Basically you're the kind of tin foil hatter who makes people think they should stay away from Firefox and crazy town.
Re: Strong Maybe? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that they could up the stakes even more by tainting third party (and deeper when a third party site links further) cookies depending on which primary site you access so that the cookies are stored in a hierarchy and won't be cross-site accessible unless you tag them to be for selected sites.
It will of course require a completely new cookie manager and it would consume some more resources. But your privacy would be improved.
And that would of course also apply to other kinds of data as well so that the caching is also isolated as well as http headers.
Isolating information areas from each other is important in the world of today. I just feel sorry for those that have Facebook accounts considering that they are usually logged in to that service and then Facebook sees almost every site they visit. It's hard to filter out Facebook, but if you at least feed them less than useful data so it always looks like you are only visiting a certain site then their pool of data is diluted.
Of course they can still see that you come from the same IP address, but if all Facebook traffic is passed through a proxy then it won't do them any good. Selective proxy traffic routing for your internet access.
Re: Strong Maybe? (Score:5, Informative)
It's hard to filter out Facebook
The Facebook Container [mozilla.org] makes it easy.
Of course they can still see that you come from the same IP address, but if all Facebook traffic is passed through a proxy then it won't do them any good.
Tor is being integrated into Firefox [mozilla.org]. So once that happens Firefox can offer this out of the box and the Tor project will no longer have to maintain Tor Browser [torproject.org].
Re: (Score:2)
My expertise with TOR is torrible.
In an experiment, I used the Tor browser to log in to a burner Facebook account and those bastards downed it handsomely.
They wanted phone numbers, photo-ID, and that shit.
Also I got geoblocks at some sites. "This content is not available in your country."
Tor is great for porn sites, nut it's slow.
Re: (Score:2)
So now you won't be able to tell where Firefox is sending data to using Wireshark?
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry, facebook owns a bunch of domains to render that useless.
Re: (Score:2)
Which are these "bunch of domains" so that I can repeat the process mapping each to 0.0.0.0 in hosts or Pi-hole?
USELESS (Score:2)
>check HOSTS
>add 127.0.0.1 *.facebook.com
>visit facebook.com
>everything still fucking loads
>127.0.0.1 everything from Microsoft to prevent Windows update
>Fucking Windows 10 STILL updates without me telling it to
HOSTS HAS BEEN USELESS FOREVER. OS and Browsers and apps ALL bypass this. Fuck off with your useless shit.
Re: manually disable pocket? (Score:5, Interesting)
Pocket tracks your site usage to "give you a better home page by providing recommendations of sites to visit" among other things.
Re: (Score:3)
My home page is about:blank. Good luck customising that.
Re: manually disable pocket? (Score:4, Informative)
So is mine. It still shoves "pages recommended by pocket" in my face when I start typing in an address.
Re: manually disable pocket? (Score:5, Informative)
So is mine. It still shoves "pages recommended by pocket" in my face when I start typing in an address.
Try setting these about:config values to stop Pocket:
browser.pocket.api = ""
browser.pocket.enabled = false
browser.pocket.oAuthConsumerKey = ""
browser.pocket.site = ""
extensions.pocket.api = ""
extensions.pocket.enabled = false
extensions.pocket.oAuthConsumerKey = ""
extensions.pocket.site = ""
In Cyberfox, it kills it dead here.
--
If this is paradise, I wish I had a shovel.
Re: manually disable pocket? (Score:5, Interesting)
Thanks for the instructions. I hope they will be helpful to me once I switch my main desktop beyond 52ESR.
My point wasn't that I am haven't stopped pocket though. The point is that if you use default browser, without going into about:config fuckery, which average user is not going to do, firefox tracks your usage closely and is not a "privacy minded browser" by any reasonable measure no matter what PR shills try to tell people.
Re: (Score:3)
My point wasn't that I am haven't stopped pocket though. The point is that if you use default browser, without going into about:config fuckery, which average user is not going to do, firefox tracks your usage closely and is not a "privacy minded browser" by any reasonable measure no matter what PR shills try to tell people.
"privacy minded browser" is why I switched from Firefox to Cyberfox. While the dev originally said he was going to quit working on it, he hasn't stopped yet. If no one else picks it up after he stops, then it's time for something else.
There are some about:config changes that can be made to FF that thwart the phoning home, many of which are posted on Martin Brinkmann's gHacks blog by one of the regular commenters.
--
"Pieces of Nine! Pieces of Nine!" Another parroty error.
Re: (Score:2)
No counter arguments from me on that one. I'm looking for alternatives to switch to right now, because 52ESR is going away soon.
Re: (Score:2)
Cyberfox is obsolete and not receiving updates. You should really upgrade to a modern, secure browser.
It isn't dead yet, and recently received an update to 5.8.0. It may be shortly, but I'm waiting to see if someone else picks up development. If not, then it's time for something else.
Re: manually disable pocket? (Score:5, Informative)
I don't value pockets functionality so i remove the icon. And I thought it was idiotic that it was integrated instead of left as a 3rd party extension.. but...
As far as I can tell, Pocket operates locally; while the pocket extension functionality in the browser does track you *locally*, its about as evil as the firefox "history" list, which is to say: not even slightly evil.
Neither Mozilla nor Pocket receives a copy of your browser history. The entire process of sorting and filtering which stories you should see happens locally in your copy of Firefox.
https://help.getpocket.com/art... [getpocket.com]
Near as I can tell, the list of all pocket recommends is sent to you. Your local browser then filters and sorts the list by comparing it to that. Your history and preferences aren't sent to pocket in this process.
Read how it works for yourself. What part specifically do you object to? What am I missing?
Re: manually disable pocket? (Score:5, Interesting)
Another user already posted Mozilla's relevant policy page in this discussion, which clearly states that they do indeed reserve the right to track your usage patterns.
What specific mechanism they use for it is rather irrelevant in scope of this discussion. "Oh it's not Pocket that sends it, it's that other module. Pocket just handles the received data based on it" is quite a disingenuous way of dancing around the issue.
Re: (Score:3)
I didn't find it. Where is this policy page? Where does it say they track usage patterns of pocket?
Re: manually disable pocket? (Score:5, Informative)
Pocket Privacy Policy [getpocket.com]
Snippet 1:
And above it in a separate paragraph:
and in that same paragraph:
They are collecting this information and telling you they aren't going to use it for anything bad; this always results in they sell your information at some point. I find it *really* hard to believe it's anonymous, as on mobile devices it captures your advertising ID on iOS and Android.
There's a reason people wanted this to stay as an extension.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't forget "Experiments" which are exempt from the standard privacy policy and can collect any information they want.
Re: Strong Maybe? (Score:2)
Google does not sell your data to advertisers. That would be the height of stupidity. The data they've collected is how they are able to make a fortune selling ads. They're not going to sell that data.
im sick of the fake mobile ads (Score:3)
That show 'you have a virus, clean files now' alerts
on mobile ads.
Any site that allows that ad in (ibtimes fuckers) should be auto ad blocked by default as punishment.
The ad hosters should be punished for accepting those ads, or for allowing ads to be updated, or all JS ads.
Those commercial sites deserve to loose millions, if they play dirty, and the advertisers, globally banned on a massive ad black list.
Re:NY Times paid ad?? (Score:5, Interesting)
They have been investing heavily in PR ever since Quantum disaster hit, and a large amount of people left firefox for any other browser, because there was no longer a meaningful reason to use it.
First PR push was "hey look, we have speed parity with chrome now". Took them a few months to realise that "parity in speed and parity with features" means that people that wanted extra features you axed will leave for mainstream browser, while being on par won't make any meaningful number of people switch the other way.
So now they have been trying other ways of selling firefox. This looks to be one of them, which is just silly. Firefox, as you note, most certainly collects usage patterns. Pocket which is built into firefox literally uses those to recommend web pages you should visit next if you go to your default home page in the browser.
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Yes, it's this kind of bullet point regurgitating PR shilling that I'm talking about.
Re: (Score:2)
Why are you posting on this site? You appear to be pretty clueless yourself.
Re: lol 'toxic' (Score:2, Offtopic)
Asians aren't minorities though. Just look at any newspaper article talking about minorities in college and you will find that Asians are consistently left out of minority status. And we all know racism isn't really racism unless it involves the oppression of minorities.
Asians gotta suck it up like the white people when it comes to college.