Why is Firefox behaving so unworthily?
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Just guesses… These may be :
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The ads and trackers present on the websites you visited on Firefox.
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Just Firefox opt-out telemetry included.
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Installed ublock and disabled all share options in settings.
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Websites can still connect to google.
Just use Fennec (official open source Firefox client)
Maybe, because it’s unworthily, as a privacy focus browser.
You might want to compare the result with other privacy focus browsers, like Brave, for example.
Other than the privacy aspect, the security aspect of Firefox is not looking good either, see: Firefox and Chromium | Madaidan's Insecurities. And it’s even worse on Android, such that it’s not recommended by PG:
On Android, Firefox is still less secure than Chromium-based alternatives: Mozilla’s engine, GeckoView, has yet to support site isolation or enable isolatedProcess.
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I disagree, it offers a lot of functionality in order to customize your experience to be more privacy preserving.
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You can also consider using Mull on android (based on firefox)
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Yet, those privacy preserving functionalities are not turned on by default, which is unfortunate for a browser that advertises with this slogan on its website:
Firefox - Protect your life online with privacy-first products — Mozilla
It’s clear that we’re not talking about what it can do if we really try to adjust it. Furthermore, adjusting those privacy switches would make the users standout from the crowd, hence a fingerprinting issue.
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It is trying to be more than just a browser for the privacy crowd, it is trying to be a general purpose browser that can also be configured to be private. If they enabled all privacy stuff by default, you would have an unusable experience for many normal people.
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Also, Mozilla is orders of magnitude more transparent than Brave, which has to count for something
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Then, it’s not a privacy focus browser, just an open source alternative to Chrome, Edge, or Safari.
Nonetheless, it’s still not a good excuse to be this worse out of the box, especially, when compared to Brave, which rarely has any website compatibility issue with a ton of privacy features enabled in its default settings.
This is not related to the current state of Firefox as a privacy focus browser. It’s something that you will have to look in the code, not business summary. In fact, I would consider Mozilla’s business to be shady at best, since the company that’s selling/advertising privacy focus products shouldn’t get most of its revenue from the world’s biggest ads company. This is a conflict of interest.
Maybe, this video could help to explain what’s wrong with Firefox. And why I will never support this browser and Mozilla:
The fact that Brave tries to fight Google’s core product with Brave Search instead of going an easy way with loyalty (half a billion per year) like what Mozilla’s doing in Firefox. This alone makes me realized which one I should give my support to. Their efforts for the internet users’ privacy are not even close.
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Brave shouldn’t get most of its profit from sketchy cryptocurrency ventures…
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Source, please.
It was an opinion, source not needed. While im not fully up to date on Brave, I find cryptocurrencies in general to be a bit suspect. However here is a source: What is Brave Rewards? | Brave. They actually serve you ads in exchange for a cryptocurrencies which only leads to the whole endeavor seeming even more suspicious in my eyes. I will concede that I don’t have a lot of evidence, just stuff that I have heard secondhand, but IMO, what they are doing is at least as bad as mozilla taking money from google. Especially with Mozilla fighting Google on many other fronts such as Manifest V3. Also, my guess is that it takes much more funding for firefox to be developed than brave, seeing as Brave simply uses Google’s Chromium engine while Mozilla singlehandedly maintains Gecko
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In my opinion Firefox has done more for privacy and web freedom than any other browser in existence (by a long shot).
Firefox intends to be a privacy-enhancing browser for a mainstream userbase, while at the same time integrating and advocating for strong privacy controls and privacy enhancing features and standards.
They build all and integrate all kinds of really great privacy protections into the browser. But because of the target userbase, they choose defaults that are more balanced, as a lot of the things we in the privacy community like and want, have usability tradeoffs that mainstream audiences consider anti-features, or do not like or understand.
But Firefox has built all of the features into their browser that are needed for a privacy conscious user to meet or exceed the level of privacy they could achieve with Brave Browser. And for those not willing or able to configure a browser themselves, there are pre-configured derivatives like Librewolf and (to a large degree) Mullvad Browser, and Tor Browser. Virtually everything these browsers do to enhance your privacy is done using privacy features built into Firefox and built by or in collaboration with Firefox developers.
I would be fair to say Brave has more private defaults than Firefox (because Brave is specifically targeting the privacy & crypto communities, not a general audience) but it is not fair to say Brave is more private than Firefox, when Firefox gives you the tools necessary to make your browser as private as you want, and gives downstream projects all the tools needed to make privacy focused spins of Firefox.
Furthermore, adjusting those privacy switches would make the users standout from the crowd, hence a fingerprinting issue.
I think this is a fallacy. All users of any relatively mainstream browser are already unique, there is no crowd to blend in with unless you are using a browser intentionally designed to force crowds (Tor Browser, Mullvad Browser). So while changing defaults will make you “more unique”, you can’t practically be more unique if you are already unique.
A very common misunderstanding with fingerprinting is that the goal is to blend in with regular users, this is not the goal because it is not possible. The goal is to blend in with others who are trying to blend in (this is the approach both Tor and Mullvad browsers take).
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I find cryptocurrencies in general to be a lot more transparency than our typical fiat units, or any business summary, see: Detecting Financial Statement Fraud. You can see fund/coin movements in real time, e.g. what’s the volume of the past 24h, what’s the total supply, circulating supply (if this is too low, it means that the project is holding a lot of leverage over the users), etc., see: Today’s Cryptocurrency Prices by Market Cap. Especially, with non-privacy coins, there’s basically nothing to hide.
Of course, if anyone is messing around with #1000 coin based on market cap, they would definitely be losing their money. But that is another matter entirely.
My point is that implementing cryptocurrency is doing more good than harm. It’s a plus, not a con. For example, I wouldn’t use Internxt to store any of my data, since I know all too well that its coin is ranked at #1894 based on the market cap. And I am not clear about their coin economic either. This is a plus for me as a potential user. Otherwise, I might not know that Storj is a much better service in comparison.
Then, this article might help:
Basically, Brave gets most of its revenue from advertising, which is paid in BAT. 70% goes to the users who opt-in to Brave Reward, 30% goes to Brave.
First, Google is the main maintainer of Chromium, but it’s not belonged to Google (Google has no way to prevent any fork to make use of the source), see in the licensing: Chromium (web browser) - Wikipedia. I think saying otherwise would be a misleading.
Second, single-handedly maintaining an insecure, worse performance engine does nothing good for anyone. It’s hardly something I can praise Mozilla for. Also, comparing to Mozilla, which gets half a billion from Google every year, Brave only gets around 25-50 millions from their ads’ revenue. But the company has done so much more in its Brave Browser compared to Mozilla has ever done in Firefox.
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But those are not Firefox, right? We’re not discussing whether Librewolf, Mullvad Browser, and Tor are good to prevent tracking, hence the thread’s topic is Firefox vs tracking.
If you’re a Tor user, then you’re a regular user on Tor. In the same way, if you’re using Firefox, then, you’re a regular Firefox user. If you play with settings or add-ons, you would be more unique compared to other Firefox users. The only way around this is to push every browser to have a sane default for privacy protection, in which Brave is doing better than Firefox currently, without breaking the majority of websites around the globe. And if that’s ever happening, then shield down. It’s not a good excuse to have a lossy protection all the time just for a few sites.
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They are Firefox, just with a user.js file… (except tor browser, but at this point most (if not all) tor browser features have been merged into Firefox…)
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Then, can we just use any Chromium browser, since everyone is the same regardless of the configuration???
Wasn’t the point about comparing the fingerprinting protection from the browsers with their default settings? I am sure a better default is very important, it shouldn’t be worse for fingerprinting protection. Otherwise, there would be no point to recommend any browser, could we just use Firefox with Tor or Mullvad user.js? In Tor’s case, you would get a better base also (Firefox stable vs Firefox ESR).
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