Using firefox but concerned now

Read about some alternatives:

Edit 2/28: It seems there is no general consensus if we should switch and/or to what.

  • Turturtley@aussie.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    2 days ago

    My issue is that while i am concerned about privacy, i’m more concerned with security patching. And none of these smaller browsers have the resources to turn around security fixes as quickly as firefox or chrome.

    Firefox is the least of the concerns as long as we have the config options to disable anything deemed not privacy-respecting.

    • ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.comOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 day ago

      This is the only good critique in this entire thread (thank you) BUT librewolf is on the exact same version as Firefox. It appears their updates are pretty fast.

      Would you have config recommendations beyond the obvious?

      • Turturtley@aussie.zone
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        17 hours ago

        I’m probably not the best person to talk to about Firefox hardening. Because… I don’t. I only go as far as using firefox containers.

        My threat model is to counter:-

        • ISP data logging
        • government filters
        • region blocking
        • hyper-personalised marketing

        I use a VPN for the first three, and I use Ublock, and don’t use google/meta/twitter/amazon/ebay for last.

        I personally believe it is impossible to escape fingerprinting unless you’re on Tor Browser, but using Tor paints you as a target in my country per the first item above.

        I also work in financial services, and am a user of my company’s product. We do significant ‘device intelligence’ and ‘behavioral intelligence’ on client devices, auth attempts, and actions taken in sessions. Log in too many times from too many different (seemingly) devices, user agents, IP addresses, regions, etc and it increases our customer risk assessment of you. Tick over a threshold and your account falls under enhanced customer due diligence. Tick over another threshold, and we’ll set auto-blocks until we can investigate. I assume that any other financial services provider worth their salt would do the same to counter fraud, money laundering, and meeting sanctions.

        I basically use a split tunnel VPN. VPN traffic for general browsing, email, etc. And looking as much as a regular user as possible when accessing financial services, government websites, etc.

        And yeah, agree LibreWolf is great. Only downside for the average user is the lack of an auto-updater. So the only tweak i’d do with LibreWolf would be to set up a cron/systemd timer to update it nightly.