Privacy browser

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Peter Linu
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Privacy browser

Post by Peter Linu »

Hi gang,
How about Mint building its very own internet browser with all the latest privacy elements and including its own VPN network. There are certainly enough dedicated people who would participate in its maintenance, I'm sure.
Peter Linu
Cinnamon 21.3 Thinkcentre M920Q + 2 Thinkpad T440p (modded) + Lenovo Y50-70 (all have VBs) + 3 PC NAS drives w XFCE21.2 + Win7 Starter-32bit on ASUS Atom (2011) [and a few others]
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jimallyn
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Re: Privacy browser

Post by jimallyn »

That's a pretty big task, and the Mint developers have a lot on their plates now. Firefox is fine for most people if you add a few extensions like uBlock Origin, Privacy Possum, NoScript, and Privacy ProtectorPlus. Chrome is OK, if you don't mind Google invading your privacy. Chromium (which Chrome is based on) has a lot of the Google "features" stripped out of it, but still leaves some in. Iridium is based on Chromium, but supposedly rips out any and all Google spyware.

https://iridiumbrowser.de/

Another good choice could be the Tor Browser. It is based on Firefox, but deletes all cookies and such when you shut it down, and all traffic goes through the Tor network, so it would be very difficult for anybody to figure out who you are.

https://www.torproject.org/
“If the government were coming for your TVs and cars, then you'd be upset. But, as it is, they're only coming for your sons.” - Daniel Berrigan
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linuxviolin
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Re: Privacy browser

Post by linuxviolin »

You have the excellent Epic Privacy Browser : https://epicbrowser.com

Unfortunately, it is currently available just for Mac/PC...
K.I.S.S. ===> "Keep It Simple, Stupid"
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." (Leonardo da Vinci)
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." (Albert Einstein)
greenism

Re: Privacy browser

Post by greenism »

Privacy browser is also available for Android devices. I use it all the time on my mobile phone and tablet.

Firefox is as American as apple pie and not a global brand. The only Firefox I use regularly is the dated but still good Firefox Klar on Android (developed for the German-speaking world).

When Linux Mint includes Firefox it tells the world it is parochial, culturally American, and not interested in being a global brand.

I think that is a foolish choice.

At the very least, Linux Mint should ship a version of Firefox that includes a wider range of search engines which covers all the globe instead of packing the list with American commercial search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and privacy browsers like DuckDuckGo which are useless outside north America.

Canonical made a stupid mistake and packed Ubuntu with American brands like Amazon and eBay. It showed that Canonical had no idea who its users are. They made the same stupid mistake with Ubuntu Touch - shipping an OS with one browser that did not even have an ad blocker. What is the first thing that 99% of Ubuntu users do when they set up a browser?

I suspect Linux Mint is just as clueless about who actually uses Linux Mint and therefore what should be included in the OS to meet our needs. Linux Mint lacks the resources to do effective market research so the end product is overly burdened by the cultural bias of the developers. Linux Mint is their talent writ large but it is also their blind-spots blown up to global scale.
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