Popular Browsers = Security Issues

[puppykickr]

Once again, Chrome is at the leading edge of allowing the tracking of its users.

https://arstechnica.com/information...s-even-when-you-flush-caches-or-go-incognito/

 

[Dannydet]

Big brother is watching us

 

[puppykickr]

And just so that everyone knows, favicons have not worked 'properly' in Lightning, the browser I go on and on about, for quite some time.

They only load up when you visit each site individually, and are purged before the next session.

Now I know why.

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/acr.browser.lightning/

 

[larrybird]

What is so safe about unpopular browsers?

 

[puppykickr]

What is so safe about unpopular browsers?

That is not the point.
The point is, and the fact remains, that there are multiple browsers that are not popular (ie., used by the most people) that are much more secure than the heavily advertised ones and/or the ones that are forced upon us in the form of uninstallable bloatware- especially garbage like Chrome, Dolphin, and other such tripe which more often than not cannot even be disabled if it is included as a system app.

 

[SonnyMD]

What is so safe about unpopular browsers?

Nothing to indicate any

 

[SonnyMD]

What is so safe about unpopular browsers?

Nothing indicates any great security features on its development page. It's just a kid building a browser.

https://github.com/anthonycr/Lightning-Browser

 

[puppykickr]

Nothing indicates any great security features on its development page. It's just a kid building a browser.

https://github.com/anthonycr/Lightning-Browser

Use the browser on any site that checks such things.

Most 'popular' browsers are only popular because the majority of people don't have any concept that there is anything better than what is forced upon them.

The producers of these apps know this, and intentionally use these apps to harvest information from unwary users.

 

[puppykickr]

Nothing indicates any great security features on its development page. It's just a kid building a browser.

https://github.com/anthonycr/Lightning-Browser

Not to mention that this 'kid' building a browser has been at it for years, and many other browsers are using his app as a base for their own browsers and downloaders.

 

[Hadron]

I always figured that since Chrome = Google its primary purpose was to give Google complete information about its users' browsing habits, and hence that anyone who used it had given up on any meaningful definition of privacy.

However, Lightning isn't perfect. Out of the box it performs worse for tracking protection, using the EFF's test site, than Firefox (or even Edge!), and even customising its privacy settings it performs worse in some respects. That's not saying that others are better in all respects (Firefox's fingerprinting protection needs more work), but it's not a panacea. But my biggest reservation is that development on it seems to have stopped a few years ago, so there is no prospect of improvement.

 

[Davdi]

I still use Firefox on desktop and laptop, and DuckDuckGo's browser on Android devices. Still not perfect, but somewhat better that Chrome (although I do sometimes use Chromium.

 

[puppykickr]

I always figured that since Chrome = Google its primary purpose was to give Google complete information about its users' browsing habits, and hence that anyone who used it had given up on any meaningful definition of privacy.

However, Lightning isn't perfect. Out of the box it performs worse for tracking protection, using the EFF's test site, than Firefox (or even Edge!), and even customising its privacy settings it performs worse in some respects. That's not saying that others are better in all respects (Firefox's fingerprinting protection needs more work), but it's not a panacea. But my biggest reservation is that development on it seems to have stopped a few years ago, so there is no prospect of improvement.

But it (Lightning) performs much better when using Duckduckgo as a search engine while customizing the settings for the homepage and other settings within Duckduckgo.

Also keep in mind that although I recommend Lightning, that is because it is vasic, simple, and better than Chrome.
It is highly accessible to everyone, and not convoluted.

Personally, I have multiple varients of Lightning on my device.
For general browsing I use IDM+, which incorporates an amazing downloader with many more settings.

Firefox just seems so bloated and slow, and some settings are buried deep enough to be annoying.
The UI is not to my liking either, and then you slow the thing more with each addon.

Sure we would all love to be as secure as using TOR, but who has time for the internet to slow to a crawl?

Maybe Firefox is different now, but every time I tried it before I got the same results.

 

[nickdalzell]

TOR became more a headache once CloudFlare became a thing. I wish CloudFlare and other CDNs would burn for all eternity.....Them and their ridiculous captchas. Poor Alan Turing is spinning in his grave..