Mastodawn

Cybarbie 1d ago

@Viss it's already all off by default right? moz is ur fren riiight?

@Viss JFC, there's a ton of shit in there. Makes me think that any time I run FF, I should do it while proxied through Burp.

Not exactly coercing me back from Vivaldi (but I did nuke all that while I was in there).

@tim_lavoie vivaldi is nice but its still got some stuff that carries over from chrome which i hate - like how it supports proxies, and how horizontal scrolling if you have a shitload of tabs is a fucking nightmare

@Viss True, and I really love the temporary containers option on Firefox, which along with keeping uBo would be the main drivers to switch back. It's feeling like a harder sell all the time though.

LukefromDC 1d ago

@tim_lavoie @Viss Forks like librewolf tend to turn this sort of shit off by default.

Think of Firefox being enshittified and the forks bringing the toilet paper, the shower, and the soap.

@LukefromDC @Viss Yeah, that's pretty much what I see Vivaldi doing for Chrome / Chromium as well.

Amorpheus 1d ago

@tim_lavoie @LukefromDC @Viss For me, the first hint not to use Vivaldi was it being under EULA. The main reason for large instances to accumulate power through knowledge is the users longing for comfort and functionality. This is also the reason why I stepped back from webkit. Sometimes you gotta sacrifice something in order to shift paradigms.

@LukefromDC @Viss By the way, I just reinstalled #librewolf, and a number of about:config items with "telemetry" in the name are set to "true".

Solo la 🌍 salva a la 🌎1d ago

@tim_lavoie @LukefromDC

Yeah, that kitchen-sink list in "permissions.desktop-notification.telemetry.siteCategories", wow.

Crap, Librewolf is the browser I use for, well, stuff like Fedi. Vivaldi for banking and such.

Maybe I'll take a look at Waterfox.

Thanks @Viss !!!!

Cleo 1d ago

@jakebrake @tim_lavoie @LukefromDC @Viss water fox user here. No complaints i quite like its oob security features another one is mullvad browser think its just a firefox wrap but i like it.

Cleo 1d ago

@jakebrake @tim_lavoie @LukefromDC @Viss can confirm Mullvad Browser is firefox and has all telemetry disabled as default. Highly recommend them
https://mullvad.net/en/browser

Free the internet with Mullvad Browser

The Mullvad Browser is a privacy-focused web browser developed in collaboration between Mullvad VPN and the Tor Project. It’s produced to minimize tracking and fingerprinting.

Mullvad VPN

Wachoperro 1d ago

@tim_lavoie
Henlo! Rando with an almost default librewolf config here.
All the telemetries i see enabled are all sub-configs of other higher-level settings that are already disabled (for example, browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.telemetry = false, but browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.telemetry.privatePing.enabled = true)
I think it's actually working as intended, it's just not very clear about them being sub-settings

But on default firefox? Disable everything, don't take any chances to leave something enabled unintentionally

@LukefromDC @Viss

@wachoperro @LukefromDC @Viss Yeah thanks, I wondered if that might be the case. Figured it takes zero effort to tick all the boxes anyway, at least quicker than finding out what the separate options do.

twohundredmotels 1d ago

@LukefromDC @tim_lavoie @Viss or waterfox

@Viss I'm feeling like we should just get Usenet back on track, so we can come up with newsgroups named alt.snoopy-malware.die.die.die

Mitex Leo 1d ago

@Viss They should not be enabled in the first place.

ghosts

@Viss Yeah. Send those DNS requests to the void, too. (and divviup[.]org too)

Pope Bob the Unsane 1d ago

@Viss weird that some of this shit is enabled in LibreWolf too...

da_667 1d ago

@Viss Use Librewolf.

C'mon... do it...

ya know ya want to

@da_667 apparently librewolf has all those on by default too

da_667 1d ago

@Viss lotta the ai shit is stripped out by default. but something fun I learned is the anti-fingerprinting is turned on by default, and it really fucks with any.run, and proxmox web VNC sessions.

Fritz Adalis 1d ago

@da_667 @Viss
Yeah, in Proxmox the shift key doesn't work. Wtf.

You can allow it by site or domain, though.

da_667 1d ago

@FritzAdalis @Viss any.run just refuses to load with it enabled for that domain.

kajer :notverified:1d ago

@Viss @da_667 maybe? All i know is if you wireshark a fresh install of librewolf and setup newtab to be about:blank, the only network connection is to mozilla push services so you can accept website notifications for some stupid reason.

the telemetry keys may be in the librewolf registry, but they don't seem to do anything

viq 1d ago

@da_667 @Viss waterfox is also nice, and can have tabs on the side as a tree!

@viq @da_667 im currently fidgeting with vivaldi, but since its just skinned chrome, it does a bunch of dumb shit i hate, like how chrome handles proxies. also scrolling horizontally across my embarassing number of tabs is massively painful and a huge ui problem, so i bailed

viq 1d ago

@Viss @da_667 in Vivaldi you can also put tabs on the side of window
https://vivaldi.com/features/tab-management/

Tab Management Features | Vivaldi Browser

Vivaldi’s unique tab management features give you full control of how you group and display browser tabs. You’ve never browsed like this before.

Vivaldi Browser

Talen Lee 1d ago

@Viss hey, hi, web using normie person here, what is going to happen when I do that and why do I want to do it

genuine question!

@Talen_Lee mozilla has enabled a bunch of telemetry under the hood - meaning that the browser will phone home shit about you, what you do, how often you do it etc - back to their mothership going to about:config in the browser will give you a sorta behind-the-scenes view of all of the browsers configs - including stuff that they dont surface in preferences/settings

like all of this telemetry stuff, which you can gleefully just turn off :D

Talen Lee 1d ago

@Viss oh okay, rad, so this shouldn't make anything I *normally* interface behave any differently?

@Talen_Lee nope! it just turns off all the telemetry that mozilla is using to measure how you use the browser

Talen Lee 1d ago

@Viss hey, thanks! Useful to know, and thanks for a genuinely helpful explanation!

Sarah E Bourne 1d ago

@Viss The true/false I think I have covered, but what about ones with text strings or numbers? Delete them, or OK to ignore them? (For instance, the value stored at toolkit.telemetry.cachedClientID)
@Talen_Lee

@sbourne @Talen_Lee the ones that had telemetry endpoints in there, i edited them and just put garbage in (asdfasdfasdf) so that even if the telemetry gets turned back on, the host its trying to phone home to is busted. i did the same for all the weather crap and llm/ml crap. anywhere theres, like, json config text for llm nonsense or weather nonsense i didnt ask for, i intentionally inserted bad data so it couldnt work even if it 'magically got turned back on'

Sarah E Bourne 1d ago

@Viss @Talen_Lee Aha! I think I'll tackle that tomorrow. I've kinda had my fill of nonsense today, if you know what I mean. And, thank you!

AI6YR Ben 1d ago

@sbourne @Viss @Talen_Lee I just cross checked Firefox vs. Waterfox, and Waterfox was basically disabled (I think fully, not sure on one setting). Best bet for normies is to load Waterfox instead.

Paul_IPv6 1d ago

@Viss @Talen_Lee

indeed... thanks for the tip.

i had all the preferences stuff set up but there was sure a bunch of other stuff to kill in about:config...

Alexander S. Kunz 1d ago

@Viss I switched to @Waterfox a couple of weeks ago & no regrets.

(updated to link to profile)

@alexskunz ive been sorta test driving vivaldi, but its built on chrome and chrome does a bunch of really dumb stuff with regards to proxy settings and some other stuff. and its got a UI glitch where horizontal scrolling of the tabs has this bizarre rubber bandig effect that makes it insufferable, so im hoping they fix that so i can try again. ive seen folks also suggest librefox too, but librefox has the same telemetry defaults that need shutting off

Alexander S. Kunz 1d ago

@Viss I'm not a fan of anything that's hitched to Google myself.

I'd be surprised if any of the telemetry stuff was actually live in LibreWolf, I think that would be a huge oversight.

Waterfox has none of it enabled: https://www.waterfox.com/#why-waterfox

Waterfox - Open source web browser

The web browser that respects your privacy

Waterfox

@alexskunz it is. someone else in the thread went looking

ewhac 5h ago

@alexskunz @Viss Shame there's no Debian package.

It'll be okay, we'll make it.1d ago

@Viss Sage advice.

Kotking 1d ago

@Viss just gave a glance on telemetry on both Librewolf and Firefox.
There are turned on sub options on Librewolf... but there are so many more stuff in normal firefox and some really specific identifiers that as casual user I like.... wtf?
I now worried about my old laptop with win7 and old mozilla if they done this bullshit on Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR) where you can't turn on ai so easily.

Frost, wolf of winter 🐺🎄

@Viss why is there so much shit??

Frost, wolf of winter 🐺🎄

@Viss there's also a telemetry server URL in there, I wonder if just setting that to blank makes it unable to send anything

@IceWolf i did both just to be sure

Wim Turnhout 🇺🇦 🍉 🇵🇸 🇦🇴1d ago

@Viss Werkt niet in Android!

Glenn Seto 1d ago

@Viss What are the currently recommended forks on desktop and Android respectively if I don't want to deal with this crap after every update?

Mx. Alba

@Viss

I switched to @Vivaldi instead

Tael 🔜 AC26 22h ago

@Viss just switch to librewolf

Solomon Schuler 21h ago

@Viss

I mean sooner than later Firefox is just going to become shit, librewolf is already the new ungoogled chromium and every other Firefox fork follows Firefox style.

Once the alpha release of #ladybirdbrowser is released this year, I'm out, I don't even care if it has no extensions it is a built from scratch private browser, and that's hard to find nowadays.

Wormbo 5h ago

@Viss If I do that, how is Mozilla going to notice I disable all their AI crap on arrival?