Any Non Brave/Non Bromite Chromium based browser recommendations for Android?

Privacy Questions
1

As the title says, I need a Non-Brave/Non-Bromite Chromium based browser that has a good track record of privacy and security.

Why not Brave? Because of its past controversies and because it does not spoof as much data as Bromite does (including Timezones).

Why not Bromite? The lead dev stepped down (according to a random guy on github) and the current latest version is two major versions behind upstream Chromium release.

What about Firefox? I already have Firefox Beta as my primary browser, I need a secondary Chromium based browser because they are faster and more secure on Android.

Thank you for your recommendations.

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2

See my comparison table: Browsers - DivestOS Mobile

Citation needed

Citation needed

Theyā€™ve been further behind before, I donā€™t think it is stopped: https://divestos.org/misc/ch-dates.txt

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Updated post to add ā€œspeculatedā€ in there, hereā€™s the link:

4

That is just some random saying so, it isnā€™t even grounds for ā€œspeculationā€.

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5

Agreed. Will update post.

6

Can Mulch be used on Non-DivestOS OSā€™s?

7

Every browser there works independent of OS.

8

Great, how do I download it then?

The F-droid link on Our Apps - DivestOS Mobile leads to a 404 F-droid page.

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Read the note, you have to add the repo first.

10

We recommend Brave. Brave has had their problems but you can disable all those things just fine. Spoofing your timezone is not going to stop fingerprinting, that is a fairy tale. If that is your threat model you should seek other methods.

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11

I see that I have to download F-Droid to add a repository on it. Privacy Guides currently recommends against using F-Droid. Any other means of obtaining the browser?

12

Well, it at least reduces the fingerprinting (I think) to a certain degree. A person browsing the internet with different IP addresses but the same Timezone will be easier to fingerprint than a person browsing the Internet with different IP addresses and Timezone complimenting those IPā€™s.

But, you are correct that these two will not defeat fingerprinting, however they can at least somewhat reduce it.

13

Sorry it really does not. Itā€™s just one attribute and it will not make a difference really. Using a less used browser like Mulch will likely only make you more unique than using Brave with your timezone.

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14

Iā€™m not an official admin but Iā€™ve using Vivaldi and itā€™s great.

Iā€™m not sure why itā€™s never mentioned here because itā€™s open source, multi platform and has an intense focus on user privacy.

Edit: Okay scratch that about Vivaldi. Itā€™s part open source and part closed source.

Iā€™ve been testing Ghostery web browser and this is open source and multi platform with a strong focus on user privacy.

Edit 2: damn it! Sorry Ghostery is based on Firefox code not Chromium. Iā€™m really sorry and Iā€™m not deliberately making mistakes with my overviews!

17

Since the thread was already necroā€™ed:
@UnscheduledRapidDisassembly
For context, at the time this was written, Bromite was only dead for 2 months.
And Cromite didnā€™t really have frequently builds, or even that name yet.

@Average_Joe
Why are you suffering with proprietary browsers?
Vivaldi doesnā€™t even do well: https://privacytests.org/
And Ghostery is literally an ad company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidon,_Inc.

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18

I appreciate your reply!

Is ā€œhttps://privacytests.org/ā€ considered to be the gold standard for testing Apps for their level of user privacy and user security?

I did a lot of research regarding Vivaldi and many experts online recommended it.

Edit: I just added quote

19

Its one tool and should be used accordingly. I also read somewhere on this forum (but i dont have a link so take this with a grain of salt) that it only teats base configuration, not with any changed settings, so it would seem like only using it to evaluate browsers would be short sighted.

As for the vivaldi thing, just use firefox IMO.

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Like who? (Iā€™m genuinely asking, not a rhetorical question), Iā€™ve personally never seen Vivaldi recommended by anyone Iā€™d consider an expert and definitely not in security circles, but it may just be a blind spot on my part).

What were their technical reasons for recommending it?

In your eyes (or theirs) what are some of the selling points of Vivaldi? Why would one use Vivaldi over other Chromium based Browsers?

My impression is that ther is no ā€˜gold standardā€™ when it comes to this kind of test, and that you can gain useful info from these tests but results should not be generalized or given too much weight.

The most important caveat with that test you need to keep in mind is that it tests default browser configurations not browsers. So general purpose browsers that are pre-configured for a broader userbase will score lower than a super niche browser configured for us privacy purists. But that doesnā€™t mean the general browser is less private or less secure, just that it has more relaxed defaults out of the box.

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21

I did a lot of research before I started using Vivaldi.

As you wanted, these were the reviews that recommended Vivaldi:

I hope these helped!

Edit: Iā€™d prefer Brave over Vivaldi because of this:

ā€œVivaldi includes more features and customization options than Brave, but Brave outperforms Vivaldi in terms of privacy.ā€

22

Only one of your sources would be considered somewhat reliable (the 3rd one), the first one openly says they get compensation for reviews at the bottom of the page, the second is a random VPN providerā€™s blog, and the last one is a publication owned by the same media org that owns Tomā€™s Hardware, Android Central, PCGamer and so on.

Donā€™t just believe random SEOā€™d websites because theyā€™re almost certainly going to be questionable at best.

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