Kelson Reviews Stuff - Page 12

Because “Internet Explorer” had too much baggage, both in code and in branding.

The default home page is the most cluttered home page I have ever seen on a web browser. Definitely more than a default Firefox full of Pocket recommendations. Possibly including the bad old days of Netscape 4 and everything wanting to be a “portal.” And frankly, I’ve never had the page full of Pocket recs slow things down the way that Edge’s home (embedding MSN news) does. Fortunately it’s a single click to turn it off, but it’s a really bad first impression.

Edge syncs settings, bookmarks, addresses, and, well, as much as it can through a Microsoft account. And it really, really wants you to sign into a Microsoft account and use Copilot and so forth, even more than Chrome wants you to sign into a Google Account these days. (And that’s saying something.) It’s compatible with Chromium extensions, but would rather you install add-ons through its own store. Portable Web Apps (PWAs) install and run fine while online, but seem to have trouble with offline support.

Once you turn off all the Microsoft specials, it feels usable again – but then, it’s just another Chromium skin. Maybe you want to keep a few Microsoft features turned on? Integration with the Family Features or desktop search, maybe? And there are some things you can’t turn off completely.

Weirdly enough, there’s still an “IE Mode” available for compatibility in the Windows 11 version!

And yeah, I have to specify the Windows version again, because it’s available on macOS and…hilariously…on Linux too! You don’t have to run it through Wine for testing! (Though it’s Blink anyway). The Linux releases are still Intel/AMD-only for now, but Microsoft provides a Debian package, and there’s a Flatpak that wraps it for other distros!

Basic camera app with support for flash, timer and video. Saving EXIF metadata is optional, as is adding GPS location to it. Doesn’t have HDR, night sight or even panorama capability. Does OK in good lighting conditions. You can set the JPEG compression quality, which is nice, though even at 90% its images are slightly noisier than Google’s camera app on the same phone. Presumably it’s doing less post-processing. Still good for snapshots or iNaturalist observations.

When you really want (or need) to stay private while using the web, Tor is the way to go.

Private windows in normal browsers only “hide” your activity from other websites and your history. VPNs only hide your activity from whoever’s providing your internet connection. Even blocking trackers (or all third party cookies) like LibreWolf and Brave or using Privacy Badger do only goes so far (though it’s certainly a good start). (Speaking of Brave, that browser’s “Tor mode” is less thorough than the real thing.)

Drawbacks

The privacy does come at a cost, though:

• Tor bounces your activity around through multiple relays, kind of like chaining several VPNs together, to hide where you’re connecting from, which slows things down.
• The browser removes features that can be used to “fingerprint” your setup (even more than LibreWolf does), so sites that use those features or info for legit purposes can’t.
• While it supports Firefox extensions, they recommend not installing any in order to avoid adding more attack surface or (again) fingerprinting data.
• Some websites block access from Tor because attackers also use it to hide who and where they are.

What it’s For

OK, so it’s inconvenient for everyday browsing or shopping. But if you need to hide your tracks from a stalker or abuser, a harassment campaign, an abusive company with network access, an oppressive government agency, or just a nosy sysadmin, Tor can help you do that.

Tor can also get around network-level censorship to some extent, both with regular websites that might be blocked and by connecting to “onion” sites, websites hosted on the TOR network.

Even then, someone with access to your network traffic can still see that you are using Tor…just not what you’re doing with it. Snowflake and bridges are add-on layers designed to help disguise that further.

Using It

It’s built on Firefox, so [most of that review applies] as far as actually using it goes, both on desktop and Android. The hardening approach makes the experience a bit more like LibreWolf or IronFox. Sometimes you’ll get the wrong localization of a site depending on where the exit node ends up (like using a VPN, except with a VPN, you’re usually picking the exit yourself).

EFF has a guide to Tor as part of their Surveillance Self-Defense collection, and Tor’s own guide goes into more detail.

The browser is available on Windows, macOS, Linux (though not on ARM yet) and Android (you can add a repository to F-Droid). There’s no iOS version, but they recommend Onion Browser (iOS) and Orbot (not a browser, but proxies apps like a Tor VPN on both iOS and Android).

A privacy-hardened Firefox variation for Android, comparable to LibreWolf on desktops. It removes Mozilla tracking and services like Pocket, but keeps sync (which is end-to-end encrypted) and local translations (which happen on your device). Like LibreWolf, it disables or narrows some features that can leak data, but those changes can break some websites.

Using it is similar to using mobile Firefox, and virtually identical to using mobile Waterfox. I’m trying both out on the same phone and I sometimes forget which one I’m using. The biggest noticeable difference is that IronFox doesn’t support WebGL unless I dig through advanced settings to re-enable it. (Update: When I was trying both out back in March, Waterfox was missing in-browser translations, but both apps support them now.)

Even then, I’ve still had trouble with a few sites failing to work correctly. The worst is when an error pops up at the end of a checkout process, and you can’t be sure whether the order didn’t get created, or the response didn’t make it to your phone – and I’ve had both happen just in the past few days.

IronFox’s web presence is minimal – mainly its Gitlab repository and mirrors. I imagine this is at least in part because it’s (sort of) a new project, picking up the Mull browser from DivestOS, which was discontinued in December. It’s not on Google Play, but it’s on several alternative app stores, including F-Droid (you need to add their repo), Accrescent and Obtanium.

Firefox Sync works across all Firefox-based browsers I’ve tried so far, not just Firefox itself. OK, all except IceCat, which I think actually removes the code that connects to it.

Even the security-conscious LibreWolf and IronFox recommend using it, despite Mozilla’s AI shenanigans, because it’s encrypted end-to-end and it’s possible to host your own server. (I have not tried this.)

One nice consequence is that I can mix and match browsers, especially since there are some that are only built for the desktop and others that are only built for mobile. I can send a page from IronFox on my phone to Zen on my desktop. (I can also sync history between different browsers that I’m trying out.)

Downsides: It doesn’t work with Chromium-based or other browsers (at least not directly), and doesn’t have an online web view. That’s why I turn off bookmarks in the Firefox Sync settings and use Floccus for those. Plus if you use several different browsers with it, settings from one can leak over to another if you don’t turn that option off.

That said, I do know of at least one command-line client (amusingly named ffsclient), which has been used to create a bookmarks sync plugin for Dillo. Yes, Dillo!