Vivaldi New Rubbish
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@imaginaryfreedom Again, nothing sneaky about it. Vivaldi comes preinstalled with search engines and bookmarks. You can delete all of these before you start using the browser. Then head over to Contribute and donate instead ^^
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@luetage said in Vivaldi New Rubbish:
@imaginaryfreedom Again, nothing sneaky about it. Vivaldi comes preinstalled with search engines and bookmarks. You can delete all of these before you start using the browser. Then head over to Contribute and donate instead ^^
Yes, I already deleted the ones that I had no interest in when I started using the browser.
The problem is that they seem to keep adding more of them now, under the pretense of "kewl new features, here - pick a new theme -ooh, lookie there, it comes with new revenue-generating links too.."
And these are only the things that I notice. What is most insidious about such things is that it leads you to wonder and worry if they are doing even more things "under the hood" to monetize your activities. I'm no fan of "surveillance capitalism", especially when those who are trying to turn me into the product are not open about how they are actually doing this.
The great irony is that I would gladly pay them money to get rid of all the sneaky revenue-generating things that clutter up my personal browser with tacky links to sites I will never visit (and thus Vivaldi will therefore never get a penny/pence/peso of revenue from), but not only that, the amount of money I'd be willing to offer to get rid of those things would probably exceed the maximum revenue they would ever generate from start page links for a single user by many orders of magnitude.
Thanks for the donate link - wasn't aware of that - but I'd prefer that it also freed me from these unexpected revenue-generating "add-ons" thrust on me without notice, and if this is a developing pattern, continue to increase in both type and frequency.
But I'm not really addressing you at this point because it's clear you aren't listening to me.
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@imaginaryfreedom Likewise, it’s clear you are ignoring everything I say too. Instead of writing the same things over and over again you should take the time and get to know Vivaldi better. The team isn’t out to get you. Take care.
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@imaginaryfreedom said in Vivaldi New Rubbish:
The problem is that they seem to keep adding more of them now, under the pretense of "kewl new features, here - pick a new theme -ooh, lookie there, it comes with new revenue-generating links too.."
They should have added a hint how to cancel that. Nobody likes their setup be busted, and I'm pretty sure Vivaldi didn't want that.
What is most insidious about such things is that it leads you to wonder and worry if they are doing even more things "under the hood" to monetize your activities
When you said 'you', did you actually mean 'me', which is to say, you? Because it certainly did not make me wonder and worry.
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@imaginaryfreedom said in Vivaldi New Rubbish:
I'm not really addressing you at this point because it's clear you aren't listening to me.
It takes two to tango. Are you listening to others when they say there is nothing sneaky about these links?
I use Ecosia as my default search engine. Maybe that gains them a few cents. However, I spend many hours of my free time here helping to support the community. If you want to help Vivaldi, reflect on the effect of your comments on this community. Think about how you could promote Vivaldi on blogs, Twitter, etc.
The Team really does work hard to protect your privacy from the likes of Google, and to enrich your browsing experience.
Blog • Vivaldi Review • Server Status
Win 10 64-bit build 19045.2486 • Snapshot 7.4.3670.3 (64-bit) -
@luetage I think you're missing Freedom's point:
Yes, Vivaldi comes preinstalled with search engines and bookmarks. That is not the problem (or at least, I don't think that's a problem)! Because you can delete any bookmark or search-engine you don't want.
The problem is: After an update, you might find a new bookmark on your speed dial. Or a screen like the one that came with the 4.0 update.
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@eggcorn One has nothing to do with the other. Don’t mix things up, it’s a slippery slope. And yes, partner bookmarks and search engines can reappear from time to time. It’s happening since 2015. It takes a grand 5 seconds to deal with every 10 to 15 months. Why it happens no idea, ask a developer.
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@luetage said in Vivaldi New Rubbish:
One has nothing to do with the other.
What has nothing to do with what?
And yes, partner bookmarks and search engines can reappear from time to time.
I've heard about a bug like that, but I don't think that's what I'm talking about. My understanding is that (at least sometimes): When Vivaldi gets a new partner bookmark, that bookmark will be added to your speed-diel during an update. By design, not by bug.
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@pesala said in Vivaldi New Rubbish:
does work hard to protect your privacy from the likes of Google
Hence Google SafeSearch and DNS built-in. At least they have a privacy focused translator (oh wait, they did that because they weren’t allowed to use G translate).
@imaginaryfreedom said in Vivaldi New Rubbish:
The great irony is that I would gladly pay them money to get rid of all the sneaky revenue-generating things
Would you? And even if you would, most people wouldn’t.
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@eggcorn said in Vivaldi New Rubbish:
My understanding is that (at least sometimes): When Vivaldi gets a new partner bookmark, that bookmark will be added to your speed-diel during an update. By design, not by bug.
Is this a thing that only happens in Stable? I have neither seen the new welcome screen nor had any sponsored bookmarks appear for the last couple of years IIRC.
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@code3 said in Vivaldi New Rubbish:
Hence Google SafeSearch and DNS built-in. At least they have a privacy focused translator (oh wait, they did that because they weren’t allowed to use G translate).
"Google Phishing and malware protection" never receives the URLs you are navigating to, so there are no information leaks there (other than IP, of course, unless Vivaldi routes all requests through a proxy).
"Google DNS" will obviously receive the URLs so it can resolve them, and your IP, but presumably nothing else. So it's a bit more of a privacy issue.
"Google Translate" would receive all website content when you translate. The DNS service could technically do this for public URLs and content and thus get the same information. But for private content? Google Translate would see everything. That is a massive privacy issue and reason enough to not use Google Translate. On top of that, Google Translate might just have been too expensive compared to the alternatives.
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@komposten Could be, I've pretty-much only used stable.
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@komposten Unfortunately, you are wrong. The way G SafeBrowsing works is a bit complicated, but if G wants to see if you are visiting a certain URL or domain they can do that easily. So, yes, URLs do get sent to Google.
Google Safe Browsing "conducts client-side checks. If a website looks suspicious, it sends a subset of likely phishing and social engineering terms found on the page to Google to obtain additional information available from Google's servers on whether the website should be considered malicious". Logs, "including an IP address and one or more cookies" are kept for two weeks. They are "tied to the other Safe Browsing requests made from the same device."
https://blog.trailofbits.com/2019/10/30/how-safe-browsing-fails-to-protect-user-privacy/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Safe_Browsing
https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/privacy/whitepaper.html
Google DNS would only need the domains, not full URLs, but is still an issue.
Google translate sends the most data, but on the other hand, it is only triggered manually and not sent behind the scenes. I am glad V did not pay for G translate, but based on their use of Google services, I would not be surprised if Vivaldi would have integrated G translate had it been free.
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@code3 said in Vivaldi New Rubbish:
The way G SafeBrowsing works is a bit complicated, but if G wants to see if you are visiting a certain URL or domain they can do that easily.
You might be interested in this post from @yngve: https://forum.vivaldi.net/post/177280
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@komposten Yes, that is good as well, now do you see how it can be abused by Google for data mining?
@yngve Wikipedia said Safe Browsing requires a preferences cookie. Is this not true?
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@code3 said in Vivaldi New Rubbish:
@komposten Yes, that is good as well, now do you see how it can be abused by Google for data mining?
No, I don't. yngve's explanation literally enforces my point: Vivaldi does not send meaningful content (URLs, text, etc.) to Google Safe Browsing, it sends segments of irreversible hashes.
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@komposten This article shows the exploits of the hashing protocol:
https://blog.trailofbits.com/2019/10/30/how-safe-browsing-fails-to-protect-user-privacy/What you need to understand is that the hashes are irreversible, unless you have the dataset where the hashes came from. In this case the hashes are URLs, and URLs are publicly available.
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@code3 said in Vivaldi New Rubbish:
@komposten This article shows the exploits of the hashing protocol:
https://blog.trailofbits.com/2019/10/30/how-safe-browsing-fails-to-protect-user-privacy/What you need to understand is that the hashes are irreversible, unless you have the dataset where the hashes came from. In this case the hashes are URLs, and URLs are publicly available.
Thank you for sharing that. It was an enlightening read to say the least. I stand corrected.
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@wildente said in Vivaldi New Rubbish:
@imaginaryfreedom said in Vivaldi New Rubbish:
They should have added a hint how to cancel that. Nobody likes their setup be busted, and I'm pretty sure Vivaldi didn't want that.
I would not personally be so quick to assume that wasn't precisely their intention in this particular case.
To be sure, this is a relatively minor transgression. But having watched the progression of the WWW from its very beginnings, it's quite clear that there is a lot of commercial abuse being undertaken via the WWW these days and as a privacy and freedom advocate I have learned to be wary of assuming any vendor has "universal good intentions".
Mozilla is a good example. They have been trying to posture themselves as some kind of benevolent, even deity-like figure in regards to their business practices around the WWW, but in recent years we have discovered a variety of sneaky things they were doing to collect user data without consent, as well as design decisions that were hard to prove were not user-hostile in some ways.
No one is above suspicion, especially since it's so trivially easy for technology vendors to pull "shenanigans" in ways that 99% of users cannot even know about, much less understand. (Google is the most extreme example of this, for a "legitimate" vendor)
What is most insidious about such things is that it leads you to wonder and worry if they are doing even more things "under the hood" to monetize your activities
When you said 'you', did you actually mean 'me', which is to say, you? Because it certainly did not make me wonder and worry.
I was using the "royal we" for those of us who have watched the patterns over many years in the technology field and how vendors oftentimes claim one thing but secretly do another when they think they can get away with it.
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@pesala said in Vivaldi New Rubbish:
@imaginaryfreedom said in Vivaldi New Rubbish:
I'm not really addressing you at this point because it's clear you aren't listening to me.
It takes two to tango. Are you listening to others when they say there is nothing sneaky about these links?
Yes I am and I am responding to their comments with my counterpoints. Apparently you didn't notice that.
OTOH, the person I was addressing in the comment you quoted has basically just been reciting the same mantra since their first post.
I use Ecosia as my default search engine. Maybe that gains them a few cents. However, I spend many hours of my free time here helping to support the community.
I never stated or implied that Vivaldi users should feel guilty about using these monetizing mechanisms (search revenue, promoted links) to earn Vivaldi some revenue.
What I have consistently been saying is that I don't appreciate when these things are done "sneakily".
To reiterate what I already wrote: It's quite clear that when someone installs Vivaldi for the first time, there are at least a couple of monetizing mechanisms that they use to keep the project afloat:
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Search engine revenue via referral links in the search box
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Click revenue from "promoted partner" websites. (Mostly on the start page though perhaps they appear somewhere else too)
So when you setup the browser for the first time, if you have no need of these "promoted partner" websites, don't want their useless services/websites cluttering up your experience, and would never click on them in the next 1,000 years anyway, you remove them, just like I did.
I don't actually mind the search referral revenue, I use some of those default Vivaldi-linked search engine choices myself at times.
What I do mind is plopping more junkware links into my UI after I already cleaned out the first round of them, without any warning or asking consent. THAT is what I consider "sneaky".
If you want to help Vivaldi, reflect on the effect of your comments on this community. Think about how you could promote Vivaldi on blogs, Twitter, etc.
The Team really does work hard to protect your privacy from the likes of Google, and to enrich your browsing experience.
Your apparent assumption that I never "reflect on my comments" is inherently offensive and presumptuous.
I already do plenty of promotion of Vivaldi in the tech environments which I spend time in.
One trend I am not a fan of is the one where people have attached their self-esteem and personal sense of self so tightly to products and vendors to the point that it becomes a sort of religious belief, such that any person that makes the slightest critical comment about their chosen "religion" is perceived as a dangerous heretic which must be silenced.
I'll let those reading this decide whether that model fits them or not.
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