• Zerush@lemmy.ml
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    2 years ago

    If you use uBO, but even so, if you have activated the sync function, you sync your data with Mozilla and with this, with Google. Brave don’t have sync, since Google cut Google Sync of for Chromium browsers other than Chrome, Vivaldi has a own sync server since years, encrypted end2end. If you lost your Sync password in Firefox, you can restore it, because Mozilla store your sync password and data, in Vivaldi, if you lose yor password, you lose your data, because not even Vivaldi has other data as your encrypted one. Ther isn’t any recover by mail o othr¡er. The price of privacy. Anyway you see thatusing Firefox or a Chromium no necessary means that one don’t tells Google your activity and the other do it., because it use the same renderer as Chrome.

    • drone328
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      2 years ago

      This is interesting, but it seems pretty irrelevant because I’m reasonably sure those aren’t ads.

      • Zerush@lemmy.ml
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        2 years ago

        Ads are not the problem, the problem is the surveillance advertizing as buisiness model, that means that the company log the userdata and activity to sell it to advertising companies. That is how Mozilla make money, Brave make money with selective adblocking with associate cryptocompanies (I don’t know if this is better), Vivaldi make money with default bookmarks and search engines from sponsors, which pay when the user use these, but the user is free to delete these, if not. Apart by donations and a merch store., they don’t use any ads or trackers.

        • Ephera@lemmy.ml
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          2 years ago

          Again, I don’t know where you get the information from that Mozilla makes money off of surveillance. For many years now, they’ve had the problem that they’re overly reliant on Google, but from the search engine deal, not advertisements. See, for example, this article: https://www.zdnet.com/article/googles-back-its-firefoxs-default-search-engine-again-after-mozilla-ends-yahoo-deal/

          They have tried to gain a foothold in advertising to reduce that dependence on Google, but that was always privacy-friendly advertising.

          • Zerush@lemmy.ml
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            2 years ago

            I do not trust so much what they say or what they put in the posts, if the Mozilla.com analytics shows me Google trackers and fingerprinting to put personalized ads, which implies the monitoring of user activity, yes or yes.

            See the screenshot or test it by yourself

            I use FF as second browser for some tasks, without account or sync, but I prefer to use a browser without any of this Google crap, which in FF isn’t given, even if it is minimal compared to other browsers.

              • Ephera@lemmy.ml
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                2 years ago

                @lienrag@mastodon.tedomum.net Yeah, and it’s not proof of a problem with the webpage either.

                Google Analytics is bad on basically any webpage that uses it, because by default, it will share data with Google. But Mozilla has a deal with Google to block that: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=697436#c14

                And you can use Google Analytics for just basic telemetry, which is not privacy invasive at all. You can do more, but this screenshot doesn’t actually provide evidence of that. And ad tracking will usually happen via ad domains, e.g. doubleclick.net.

                I’m definitely on board with not just believing everything at face value, but then we need actual proof. Mozilla is legally a nonprofit with express claim of wanting to protect privacy.
                Any actual evidence of them breaking with that, would set the internet ablaze. Any tech journalist would want that news story published. Their own employees would become whistleblowers sooner rather than later, because they are aware of the public image.

                Therefore, if you don’t have complete evidence, I think, it’s sane to assume that Mozilla are not being evil until you do find actual evidence.
                They are not a traditional company, where I have made that same observation that Google Analytics on the webpage == garbage. @Zerush@lemmy.ml

                • Zerush@lemmy.ml
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                  2 years ago

                  If you read my posts, you will see that I also use FF and I know that the issue with Google is les than in other browsers, but even Mozilla need money for its infrastructure, servers need money. Their business model is the advertising and by usin Alphabet, which is the associate company, they pass userdata in this model. Even there are few data, I prefer a browser which don’t has this business model de surveillance and advertisings for my daily use. Currently there are a lot of browsers in the market, but when you search those which respects the privacy, there are only Vivaldi, Brave and also Firefox. Brave use some cryptosites as sponsores with a probably selective adblocking, which I don’t like much, others are half discontinued, outdated engines or a bad support. The rest are Firefox and Vivaldi, because of this I’ve both, but using Vivaldi as main browser because of the reasons I mencioned before.

                  • Ephera@lemmy.ml
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                    2 years ago

                    Right, so here’s what I believe to be facts, without having sources to prove every little detail:

                    Firefox’s main source of income is the default search engine deal with Google. Yes, they practically advertise Google Search by doing this, but they do not submit more data to Google than google.com itself would like to submit. If you change your default search engine, you’re completely unaffected.

                    Mozilla also does some advertising, but they are building their own (privacy-friendly) advertising network for that. They are not collaborating with Google for that.

                    The use of Google Analytics is for telemetry only, so they can improve their software with anonymized data.


                    This isn’t a great situation. Whenever they add privacy protections to Firefox, they’re biting the hand that feeds them + they’re competing with that hand + they need webpage owners to like them, too, since they have their own rendering engine.

                    But when it’s a decision about a smaller implementation detail, those parties won’t notice Mozilla’s decision and then Mozilla will gladly opt for the most privacy/user-friendly option.

                    If it is a larger decision, like good ad blocking, then they will often not make it the default, but give users the option to install an extension or change a setting. This is also especially driven by the Tor Browser devs, who need these capabilities and if they’re not contained in Firefox, they need to maintain their own patches on top of Firefox.


                    So, with Firefox, we have a finance model that requires the user to configure a few things to get the most privacy-friendly option possible.

                    Vivaldi, Brave et al have a different model. They need significantly less money, because they’re not building their own engine. More than 99% of their code base is taken verbatim from Chromium/Blink. Those smaller implementation details were all decided on by Google.
                    And then they add content blockers on top to try to fix that.

                    This finance model generally allows them to be more privacy-friendly out of the box. But with 15 minutes of customizing Firefox, you get a privacy-friendly browser like no Chromium-based browser will ever be.

              • Zerush@lemmy.ml
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                2 years ago

                Only when you download FF from there or you create an account because you want the sync service, then Google know it.

            • IngrownMink4@lemmy.ml
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              2 years ago

              Your beloved Vivaldi blocks absolutely nothing with its adblocker by default. It’s one of the worst browsers to protect the user’s privacy. I admire Vivaldi for being against cryptocurrencies and for their alliances with products that are private and trustworthy, but your fanaticism disgusts me.

              And I find it very hypocritical of you to blame Mozilla for including 1 tracker on their website, when Vivaldi is proprietary software and they include a whitelist for their weak adblocker to satisfy their partners. Also, their UI is written in Node.js, that’s what makes it so slow compared to Brave and Firefox.

              • Zerush@lemmy.ml
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                2 years ago

                The Vivaldi ad and trackerblocker is customizable, you can it easy reforce with the filter you want in the settings. By default use the same filters as uBO.

                • IngrownMink4@lemmy.ml
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                  2 years ago

                  Vivaldi’s adblocker lacks cosmetic filtering aka element blocking. Advanced features like JavaScript blocking, web logger, are not available in the browser’s built-in blocker. And some websites detect their native adblocker, and prevents you from accessing the website without disabling the feature. Not a good implementation IMO. Also, it’s written on C++ (a memory unsafe language).

    • Ephera@lemmy.ml
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      2 years ago

      Firefox Sync is end-to-end-encrypted, too. See, for example:

      They are generally able to recover sync data, because it’s supposed to be synced to one or more Firefox installations (it’s specifically not a backup service). When you request a password reset, they essentially just wipe what they have on their servers and then re-upload the data from your Firefox installations, encrypted with your new password.