Vivaldi New Rubbish

code3

@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.

Komposten

@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.

ImaginaryFreedom

@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.

ImaginaryFreedom

@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:

Search engine revenue via referral links in the search box
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.

ImaginaryFreedom

@luetage said in Vivaldi New Rubbish:

@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.

Once again you dismiss legitimate concerns and return to the mantra that you began with your first post here.

People in general do not generally like it when software vendors change their carefully customized settings from one day to the next without any warning or asking of consent.

This is not an esoteric concept.

In fact, the entire practice of manipulating users via tricky settings or changing their settings and user interface in gratuitous ways* without notifying them has spawned an entire new field of study in "Dark Patterns". It's rampant on the web in particular these days.

*By "gratuitous" I do not mean "vendor has changed the way the application or service works for all users and the old way is not available any more".

I mean when you are given a variety of settings and led to believe you have personal control over all of them, only to find one day you launch the application or login to the service and discover that those "user adjustable settings" have been changed without any warning or asking of consent.

Simple and obvious.

ImaginaryFreedom

@code3 said in Vivaldi New Rubbish:

@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).

Yeah, I do believe that Vivaldi is "good" on privacy matters, but not "great".

I have mostly forgiven them for not being totally hardcore on that stuff because unfortunately in most cases the competition is even worse.

@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.

I already explained this in a prior post, maybe even the one you were quoting. I've done it in the past already, until Vivaldi's predecessor discontinued offering paid licenses for the product.

Pesala

@imaginaryfreedom said in Vivaldi New Rubbish:

Yes I am and I am responding to their comments with my counterpoints. Apparently you didn't notice that.

What I noticed is that you continue stating the same nonsense about "sneakily" adding links. If an upgrade does add a new bookmark or speed dial it is right in your face so you cannot claim that it is "sneaky." Even new search engines are pretty obvious as soon as you go to search.

Generally, upgrading an instance of Vivaldi that you have already cleaned up does not add back what you already deleted. If it does, that may be a bug or just user error.

If Vivaldi has made new deals with partners then some new links may be added.

Eggcorn

@pesala said in Vivaldi New Rubbish:

What I noticed is that you continue stating the same nonsense about "sneakily" adding links. If an upgrade does add a new bookmark or speed dial it is right in your face so you cannot claim that it is "sneaky."

I think you're splitting hairs and arguing minor points of semantics there. You think "sneaky" is too strong a term, okay. But you're not addressing the substance of what Freedom said.

Ayespy

@eggcorn I don't experience, once all of my settings, bookmarks, etc. are set up, that Vivaldi adds any links at all. Not any. I have seen this complained of from time to time, but it's hard for me go figure out how a person must have the browser set up in order to get partner bookmarks added with every update.

Eggcorn

@ayespy said in Vivaldi New Rubbish:

every update

No, not every update. At least not in my experience. I can only recall one update, where I noticed a new bookmark in my speed diel.

But then, I suppose I would have only noticed one update. Because after that happened, I created a new Speed Diel folder called "SD" and stopped using the default Speed Diel folder.

SamirNP

@imaginaryfreedom vivaldi is awesome, as a tech guy sometimes i have to be on the internet even when i am tired, but with vivaldi i just sync pc to android and keep on. what amazes me is that i like the UI of both the pc and android version than any other browser.point is the team needs to earn too, and it deserves to, to me.nothing but love for this browser.