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Is Firefox any more private/secure than Brave?
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this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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Privacy
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Short version: Firefox on desktop, something chromium-based on Android. See https://www.privacyguides.org/en/tools/ for the long version!
For security - yes, chromium-based. But for privacy Mull (Fennec) with extension support would be superior!
I did not find any justification of why they arbitrarily did not considered Gecko browsers in privacyguides. They just made that statement. I am not surprised that certain chromium browsers are more secure simply because Google has a bigger budget, but I did not see any justification for it. Then again the EFF will say that Tor Browser is better then Brave so we can argue about these minor points forever.
Then again none of that minor stuff matters to me. I care more about the goals of the organizations themselves and I am not convinced that any of the Chromium browsers take us down a sane path. So I will be staying with Firefox thank you very much.
From this page (which has links to Mozilla if you want to read more)
Thanks, I did not see that before.
Other interesting thing is that about:config is disabled on mobile except maybe nightly. Wonder why?
The other advantage of Brave is that it is more secure out of the box. From privacy point of view that should be better at blending in to the crowd depending on user base size. In Firefox I usually add an extension and configure it and some about:config settings. Somewhat minimal but probably quite unique.
Not sure about
about:config, though it's the kind of discussion that pops up in !privacyguides@lemmy.one so you might have better luck asking there.I never know what to think of Brave. They do seem to have some serious privacy tooling available, but they also seem to get up to so much dodgy behaviour when it comes to money that I don't really trust them.
Browsers are very complex and fast moving tech. This means expensive. This implies professional paid staff. Then comes how to raise money. The big companies have revenue streams. Smaller groups have to do it any way they can which is always compromising something.
Mozilla too makes compromises... setting default search to places I would not use. Trying to offer a subscription set of services which is actually not a bad plan but is not exactly to the point. So I trust them more and want to see them succeed but they have challenges too.
Some ways huge parts of tech relies on questionable income streams including the tracking, ad, and personal information broker business. Google of course but Mozilla is funded largely by Google as far as I know. Apple may get similar funding but larger. Microsoft even in Windows installs crapware from partners. So it is everywhere. HP laptops typically do too.
No sync that way though, so I'm not sure how someone would access bookmarks, history, and open tabs that way.
Up to you if you think that feature is worth the security/privacy loss. Personally I've not missed syncing tabs across devices, I do most things on the one device anyway.
I don't think there would be any privacy loss, Firefox sync is encrypted and all that. I work on multiple devices so I absolutely need it.
I meant the security/privacy loss of using Chromium on desktop or Firefox on Android
Maybe the explanation is somewhere on the site you linked, but I didn't see it. Why is Firefox on Android less secure?
Under the Android section: