this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2023
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Privacy
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FOSS nowadays isn't the same anymore since BigBrothers entered this world, first Google and Microsoft, the latter even acquiring GitHub, FOSS is no longer the same as it was a few years ago. Many companies no longer focus on communities, developing their products tangentially to the user more in their own interests. In the world of browsers, there are already more than 100 on the market, forks of Gecko, Blink and Webkit, some exotic ones aside, like Otter, which is also fighting for its life to avoid passing to the more than 70 browsers that were abandoned and discontinued in this Browser war that exists, where everyone fights to survive against the great Mainstreams Chrome, EDGE, or the Chinese Opera.
I have been using Vivaldi for more than 7 years and I have seen Google's tricks to eliminate it, even leading to the point that the Vivaldi team removed the Vivaldi UA, disguising it as Chrome, against their own interests, so that the user not getting blocked by Google services and related pages with the argument "browser not compatible" which was absurd. Since then there has been a continuous war against Google's attempts to control this browser, which has until now always resulted in Google coming to hit the teeth on a rock, (IdleAPI, FLoC, and other crap)
Meanwhile Mozilla made a contract with Google, for using Google as main search, apart from sending Data of the accounts to Alphabet, googletagmanager and googleanalytics to survive. That is the value of FOSS today, not the user or the community, nor the ethics or transparency of the company.
FOSS is important, yes, for devs who want to launch another fork more, but not so much for the normal user, for this it counts excellent support, an active community, a real interaction with the devs and the team, honesty and ethics of the company. But yes Vivaldis 5% of the script of its unique UI is proprietary, to avoid that Google, EDGE or Opera can fork it, same with Brave, it also isn't fullOpenSource for similar reasons (see its TOS about copyrights) Other engines are easier to go OpenSource, because Chrome or EDGE can't fork it for the own browsers. It's not the same problem.
Not all what is proprietary soft is crap nor all FOSS is the panacea, it's by way not so simple, with ugly surprises when you walk with fixed ideas
Do you have sources what Data firefox sends to Alphabet etc?
Good website! Mozilla.org is not used by the browser though
https://themarkup.org/blacklight?url=addons.mozilla.org
https://themarkup.org/blacklight?url=accounts.firefox.com
https://webbkoll.dataskydd.net/de/results?url=http%3A%2F%2Faccounts.firefox.com
So far I cant reproduce that?
You make your account in Mozilla.org, you even download FF and some forks from Mozilla.org, you also sync in the servers of Mozilla, what you are testing is the app store and the specific account site, which are only subpages and it's data are stored in Mozilla.org and from there to Alphabet, as say, to Google. As say, Firefox is a good and private browser itself, but only if you download it from source instead from Mozilla, without an account and sync with own server, if not Google will recieve your account data. That's the lack when a company depends on external investors and makes a contract with the devil, thereby losing its independence, since the investor can dictate the rules, this was Mozilla's big mistake. Now they are certainly trying to free themselves from this contract and I sincerely hope that they achieve it next year as they proposed. Depending on surveillance advertising, it is not a good idea, not for the company, especially if it wants to be used in the EU, and even less so for the user. Mozilla deserves to be able to regain its independence from Alphabet (advertising company), which it has lost with this contract with Google.
Vivaldi does not have external investors, precisely to preserve its independence, they have a different business model, based on their own conditions. They use different links and search engines that include by default in the browser when you download it, they pay a commission when used with the Vivaldi browser and the user is free to use them or delete them, if they do not want to use them. Apart from this, they have a Webstore with Merch and, after requests from many users over the years, they now also accept donations, which was not the case before. Now with the inclusion in the automotive versions in Renault, VAG, Polestar and Mercedes will also receive commissions. All this does not commit user data to advertising companies by Vivaldi at all, it only does so if the user uses a search engine that is not private, but this is then their own decision, Vivaldi cannot prevent you from using Facebook, search with Google or Bing.
They load google Javascript right? Does that proof "your account data" is sent to Google or Facebook (hate these hide-away company names)
I think this is not true. Mozilla doesnt send user accounts to these sites.
Even though the plain existence of these javascript tracking scripts is absurd. But dont spread fake news please
I dont think Mozilla sends your account data to Google. And because the main homepage uses tracking, that is not a sign that the internal account database is shared. These are completely unrelated.
Mozilla clearly send data to Alphabet, googleanalytics and googletabmanager, I don't believe that this data are only christmas greetings to the sponsor. But I also think and hope, that this will cese if Mozilla finish the contract with Google in 2024 as they say. Mozilla does not deserve to be under Google's control and there are not many alternatives in the market.Yes, there are a lot of forks of Gecko and also Blink, but mostly with bad maintance, poor support or even contract with the devil, well with surveillance advertisings (Chrome, Edge, Opera (this one the worst)), with shady crypto companies (Brave), or direct filtering data to Gov and security services (Safari). Some exotics wit Qt or Goanna engine (Otter), batteling to survive or are discontinued.(Falcon) As said, Vivaldi and Firefox (or maybe one of the better forks, like Floorp or Midori), there are not much more.I've both.
You're wrong. For privacy, being proprietary is one of the biggest red flags.
That's absolutely true tho.
Not at all, proprietary soft or services from big corporations are certainly a red flag, but not necesarly from small ones or startups. Which search engine do you use? If FOSS, which engine do it use? VPN? Drivers? eg IrfanView or SSuite are crap? Not so easy and always wrong to globalize.
There's a relevant difference here. If the proprietary software runs on the server side and everything on the client side it's free software, that's very different than running a proprietary web browser on your own machine.
So as long as my search engine does not execute proprietary JavaScript and I can connect to my VPN using the OpenVPN or Wireguard client, it's okay.
Nonetheless, it's of course very much preferable that the server side is free software too.
I don't care if the proprietary software comes from a mega corp or a small startup. It's still proprietary.
In proprietary soft the risk of privacy flaws is greater in online services, than in local apps, just the other way arround as you said. In FOSS yo can only stay secure selfhosting it, but not all people have the possibility or the money to pay an own server and must trust an more o less stable public server. Well, as VPN you can use Proton, which is Freemium OpenSource, like also some others, but even so, are you sure about the hundreds or thosends of public servers which connect the VPN? As said, don't use some pink FOSS glasses with "the wonderful FOSS and proprietary soft very bad" Mantra, the awakening of these idealizations can be unpleasant, I know.. Ask a dev of the lot of work which must be done, to convert Chromium, which is 100% FOSS, in something private and usable and how many FOSS in GitHub, GitLab and others, are full of APIs from Google, Facebook, Amazon, MS...., all of these are also 100% FOSS. The risk is online, not locally in your PC (malware apart, often also FOSS), outgoing traffic from an app, you can control, outgoing traffic in an online server you can't.