Recently there has been controversy around Mozilla Firefox.
I’ve been looking for an alternative but really struggling, seems like every alternative has a downside:
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Vivaldi: Uses some proprietary code and likely not doing much better on the user data side of things, also based on Chromium.
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Tor: Uses Tor protocol and so is quite slow, my ISP would probably also think I’m a drug lord.
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Fennec: Basically looks the same as Firefox but guessing less up to date, F-Droid has a warning about it’s using Mozilla services for tracking.
What are you guys using? Have you found anything good?
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IronFox is similar to what Mull was and similar-ish to fennec. You can also try Brave or Vanadium if you wish to go Chromium
I think I might give IronFox a go, just a bit weary as never heard of it before, not sure who is the owner of the project and where they are based, GitLab project only has ~125 stars.
Have you ever used the Accrescent app store? That’s their recommended option for installing it.
I haven’t used Acrescent but I believe it’s made by the GrapheneOS team. It’s focused on security, rather than totally FOSS programs.
I’m pretty sure the Acrescent store is independent from Graphene OS - though they just seem to like the project so much they made it available in their own “App Store”
Yes this is more correct. They wanted to provide to their user an alternative store that meets their security criteria so GOS users can download and install other apps safely.
Gotcha
Switching from Firefox to Chromium because of the latest Mozilla policy changes is insane. Google is ten times worse in every relevant aspect.
Brave and Vanadium remove the google telemetry. Next complaint?
If telemetry is the problem, the rational thing to do is to use a fork/build of Firefox without the telemetry, not support the Google monopoly or go for browsers that have had potentially problematic privacy policies for a lot longer than Firefox.
The issue is that any firefox-based browser on Android lack of per-site isolation unlike chromium browser. It’s a security issue that Mozilla doesn’t seem interested in fixing. And it does impact every fork such as IronFox (previously Mull)
I am mainly using Firefox engine on all my computers but on Android I am using either Vanadium when on GrapheneOS and a tweaked brave when not.
For me personnaly it has nothing to do with supporting Google’s monopoly on web tech or not. It’s not about telemetry either, it is a security concern.
+1 for IronFox
+2, using it as my daily over vanadium
Interesting, seems you have to download the
.apkdirectly from their repo though, rather than any store. So I’m guessing there’s no automatic updates?Yeah, but I see it as a pro and a con. With previous browsers I used like Mull, Fennec and Bromite, the store versions usually lagged behind, usually due to FDroid shenanigans, and downloading it from the source eliminates the middleman. While it is more work, I do use my browser for many important things, so I feel like it’s worth it for my use case.
I just found out you can use Obtanium to make this process easy, you can just add the repo URL into the app.
Very nice! I will look into using it
Are you using Obtanium ? RSS Feed ? Or the app notify you and you manually download and install the update ?
Just seen another post on Lemmy about it.
I’ve been sticking with Ironfox as much as I can. It took up the mantle of Mull so Its based off fennec but got the security locked down and mozillas telemetry ripped out. Of course this means some websites don’t play nice so I need to occasionally use a less hardened browser like firefox or kiwi(chromium based that can install any desktop extension). You should be used to that situation if you’ve used a hardened browser before though.
If I recall right you don’t need to use the Tor network on the Tor browser. disconnect from the network and see if you can use it as a regular clear web browser. Also your ISP don’t give a fuck whether you use TOR or a VPN, in fact they probably prefer it. As long as you pay them each month and they aren’t getting calls from DMCA laywers or Feds running a honey pot they dont give a fuck. Apparently Its when you start torrenting gigabytes of data off of cellular network that they start getting pissed.
I’m using Vivaldi and I’d recommend it. Obviously nothing is perfect, and especially browsers, but I’d implore you to look further in to it.
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Fennec cause it got cute little mascot
After looking for a browser without anti-features, I have settled on using FREE Browser
Isn’t that one chromium based?
–From my experience of using it
It is a libre web browser, that’s all I care about.
Waterfox has been great.
So currently this is my recommendation for web browsers for Android.
Chromium based (best for security on Android)
- brave, disable cryptocrap, telemetry sponsor background and you’re pretty much good to go.
- cromite, an active fork of bromite which is basically an upgrade of ungoogled chromium
- Vanadium, if you are using GrapheneOS
Firefox based browser (none support per-site isolation as of today)
- IronFox, a active fork of Mull, basically the most harden FF flavor on Android
- Fennec, basically a fully libre FF flavor
How do you feel about DDG browser? It’s another chrome based option. I’ve been using it when the some rare website won’t work in a Firefox fork, and I’m curious to hear other people’s opinions about it.
I like their free email forwarding service for throwaway accounts. Obviously, they aren’t private in any way.
