Privacy: I want a browser that doesn't make any automatic network connections without my initiating it
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It is already very hard to overcome the allergy to use another Chrome clone browser because of its association with Google (even though the Vivaldi team has done a fantastic job), and not respecting the users wish to have a private browser makes this all the more difficult.
As a power user, I would like a browser that allows me to completely disable features through settings, so that when Vivaldi is opened, it doesn't make any automatic connection requests unless I have initiated it (even to Vivaldi servers).
Will Vivaldi do this?
I have currently disabled nearly everything including - all Google services, Google extensions, suggestions in address and search, update check, malicious url check, blocklists, default search engine to custom one, set blank start page, deleted all speed dials, trackers, sync etc. (everything I could think of that could initiate an auto network request) - on the latest version of Vivaldi browser (5.5.2805.42 Stable channel) and yet, Vivaldi browser still tries to make automatic requests on start up, without my permission. (Note that this is on a clean install with no extensions installed).
Have I missed disabling anything else, or Vivaldi doesn't wish to allow any user to disable some service that requires network connections?
(Note: Pale Moon and Orion browsers are the only other 2 alternate browsers that I have come across that allow this, highlighting that they respect their users. I would still however switch to use Vivaldi browser if Vivaldi browser also does this because I respect the founder and feel Vivaldi can do a better job than them.)
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@shabeer It's an interesting question. I will let others who know better than me answer, but I have to wonder, if the only way Vivaldi can exist is to show potential partners that it has users, how can it exist if users pretend not to exist? An interesting question. Perfect privacy means no one can know you (not you personally, but simply the instance of a/any live person using Vivaldi) exist, which means Vivaldi can't count you, which means Vivaldi has to sell partners on giving them money with the understanding that they don't actually have any users, and no one will receive the impressions concerning partners that Vivaldi is sending. Just sayin'...
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@shabeer I mean, Pale Moon and Orion don't actually have any income or business model. Hence, they exist only on the basis of voluntary contributions.
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@shabeer I just got thinking about this some more, just philosophizing to myself and thinking about what I know concerning Vivaldi's offerings and expenses and I realized Vivaldi's payroll has to be something close to a couple million dollars a year, they provide, free to the community, a webmail service, a forum, blog space, sync service, and what-have you. So they are buying a fair amount of expensive hardware and bandwidth for users to use. But they charge exactly zip for that. So, now, they need some bux for all this and they ask a potential partner, "We'd like to include your logo and a link to your services on our default start page, for just a few thousand dollars." Advertiser says, "Kewl, how many users will we reach?" Vivaldi says "about 2.4M." Advertiser says, "Kewl. How do you know? Can you show me?" Vivaldi says, "Well, that's just what we believe. We have no actual proof of it." Advertiser says, "I see, well...Call me when you can show me what I'm paying for." Vivaldi says, "you mean, we would have to actually count our users somehow, not just imagine them?" And the advertiser says "If you want my money, that's about the size of it."
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@Ayespy I understand that Vivaldi is a for-profit organisation, and I have nothing against them trying to make money. But I don't want it done at my expense. Meaning, the internet is being increasingly privatised by Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon etc. and sadly their business model hinges on increasingly invasive data mining of our personal data. This loss of privacy means we will have increasingly less autonomy in the future, and even endanger our country's democracy when our personal data is used against us to influence us. I am sure you are aware that people increasingly have started caring more about their privacy. That is why we are also seeing increasing demands in many democratic countries to tighten privacy laws and even make some current practices illegal or highly regulated. The EU has already made some good laws on this, and has proposed even more legislation to address privacy concerns. Other democratic countries are following suit too.
Perfect privacy means no one can know you (not you personally, but simply the instance of a/any live person using Vivaldi) exist, which means Vivaldi can't count you ...
True. But for people like me, who do care about privacy more than the average user, the lack of privacy options means that I will never be a Vivaldi browser user. (Which is true by the way - even though I was a huge fan of Opera I haven't still switched to Vivaldi because I have become more privacy conscious and Vivaldi browser doesn't respect that).
A balanced compromise I can think of is to obtain consent from power users. Leave the default as it is for the average users. But allow power users to disable everything, if they want to. For those who do so, display a simple message that informs them and seek content to "count" them. For eg., something like this can be shown to the user:
"Vivaldi respects your privacy and your choice to prevent all automatic connections from the browser. But to attract investors to our project, to improve out browser further, we do need to track how many users are using Vivaldi browser. Please allow us to count and add you as a user in our database (the following info will be sent to us ONCE <describe what data you will be collecting> which will be protected by our <link to PRIVACY POLICY>)". (Display with a YES and NO button).
But if you want track users through third-parties, especially Google, then I am afraid your business model is screwed up and Vivaldi will not be successful.
Vivaldi (the company) is, I am sure, quite aware that this is not a new topic - I recall that since the public launch of Vivaldi browser (beta), many users have been vocal in asking for what I am asking today and they have continued to ask it on every release. They have also been publicly critical of Vivaldi including Google services in the browser.
As I pointed out, your competitors - Pale Moon and Orion - are already offering us better privacy options. What choice does Vivaldi have but to do the same?
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@Ayespy Pale Moon uses the typical, traditional business models that browsers have relied on (sponsored bookmark links or startup page, tieup with search engines etc.). Orion's business model is a private search engine that requires paid subscription. They may be planning to sell other services with a "privacy" focus in the future.
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@shabeer Sorry dude, but I have to assume that you do not really exist, therefore I cannot provide you with any free support for using this free browser.
I think this request can be tagged as Will Not Do since it would remove any source of income to continue Vivaldi’s development.
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@TalGarik Orion is still in beta. I currently use it with uBlock Origin and Decentraleyes extensions downloaded from Firefox AddOns, and they both work fine. On ios / iPadOS, you are right that many extensions, including uBlock Origin are broken on Orion. Pale Moon / White Star is also a decent browser (surprising, actually, when you consider the developer drama that happen with their project).
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... it would remove any source of income to continue Vivaldi’s development
By Toutatis, the sky will fall down too, if Vivaldi stops phoning home! Sarcastic jokes apart, that's a lame excuse. The worst-case scenario you mentioned will only happen if Vivaldi is already allowing third-parties to track us. That would imply Vivaldi has no care about user privacy vis making money. That's a slippery slope ...
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@shabeer said in Privacy: I want a browser that doesn't make any automatic network connections without my initiating it:
@TalGarik Orion is still in beta. I currently use it with uBlock Origin and Decentraleyes extensions downloaded from Firefox AddOns, and they both work fine. On ios / iPadOS, you are right that many extensions, including uBlock Origin are broken on Orion. Pale Moon / White Star is also a decent browser (surprising, actually, when you consider the developer drama that happen with their project).
uBO does not "work fine" - apparently it works alas Orion as everyone else when it comes to extensions has to deal with the API's limitations and webkit's limitations limit uBO, you better use Orion's internal ad-block.
I know it is still in beta but when on your home page you say the FF/chrome extensions work - when most of the time you can install them but they work in a flawed way or do not work at all - you are a liar.
As for Palemoon I am uninterested in browsers without a mobile version - (it should read: browsers not promising that an iOS version is coming) -
@shabeer , all browsers need an incomming for their infrastructure, servers, etc, they can do this by selling user data to third parties, like Chrome, Edge, Opera and also Mozilla do (to Alpphabet/Google), or like Vivaldi, using optional sponsor links and search engines, a shop with some merch and donations. But to have a notables place in the market, Vivaldi and any other browser need to count its users and which OS they use, in which country, etc.. pure anonymous statistic values, nothing that is a lack in privacy.
Yes, there are other browsers which don't do this, but they have in most case a very short life, because its a huge work to maintain and update regulary a browser for several different OS.
The reason why are currently more than 70 browsers abandoned and discontinued in the list.
At the moment there are only a few browsers that can be taken seriously on the market, to choose Chrome, Edge, Opera that track user activity and data, Safari, which is probably the next IE if Apple does not stop being so determined to making life impossible for external developers, Brave with questionable crypto-businesses, infinity of Chromium and Gecko forks, almost all poorly attended and outdated and some projects with exotic engines that do not come out of the alpha phase in years. The ones that remain are Firefox and Vivaldi, this is what there is. -
This is also quite difficult to solve considering that many frameworks, apps built on top of other apps, don't allow developers to change how they phone home. For example, in vivaldi's case the browser expects some phoning home in order to download key components like DRM modules to make netflix work.
@shabeer said in Privacy: I want a browser that doesn't make any automatic network connections without my initiating it:
As a power user, I would like a browser that allows me to completely disable features through settings, so that when Vivaldi is opened, it doesn't make any automatic connection requests unless I have initiated it (even to Vivaldi servers).
If you're a power user, you may be better off setting up a firewall. Pretty much every app assumes an internet connection these days and will phone home. It is much more effective to use a firewall and block connections yourself than it is to rely on developers to add their own opt-outs.
On windows I use "binisoft Windows Firewall Control" for this purpose. There are many such services available for linux based firewalls. Once set up it gives me a lot more peace of mind.
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I use PortMaster (FOSS)
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uBO does not "work fine" ... extensions has to deal with the API's limitations and webkit's limitations limit
If we are going to go by that yardstick, then uBo's own founder developer says that uBo works best on Firefox / Gecko and highlights how every other browser engine cripples it in some manner. From that perspective alone, Gecko / Goanna based browsers would be the best choice for uBo fans. As far as Kagi Orion is concerned, its initiative to fix WebKit's limitations by attempting to integrate the WebExtension APIs to it is appreciable. And they seem to have done a decent job for a beta release.
As for Palemoon I am uninterested in browsers without a mobile version
From that perspective, Vivaldi also loses its appeal to me as it isn't available for my mobile OS (Sailfish OS). Anyway, that's all irrelevant as we are discussing Desktop browsers here.
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@LonM :
... many frameworks ... don't allow developers to change how they phone home. For example, in vivaldi's case the browser expects some phoning home in order to download key components like DRM modules to make netflix work.
Why should that matter if a user has disabled that feature? And even when it is enabled, the browser can still inform the user and ask for consent before downloading Widevine or SilverLight or some other DRM module? For example, that's what Brave does:
To be clear, I am not asking Vivaldi to disable all features that initiate automatic connections and then ship that as a default. All I am asking is that you provide an option to disable it for those who want to. Your current default settings are good (and even necessary) for the average users. But allow us power users and privacy conscious individuals to disable what we don't care about. Isn't it a flawed assumption on Vivaldi's end that you think that every user will then 100% disable everything!? And if 90% to 100% of your users will indeed disable everything, like I want to, then doesn't that highlight an real flaw in your (unsustainable) business model?
If you're a power user, you may be better off setting up a firewall.
I do indeed use an application firewall, with a limited whitelist. But that's missing the whole point. It's about the principle - does Vivaldi care about protecting its users' privacy? If you don't, then I know that I'll just be continuously fire-fighting with Vivaldi as Vivaldi (or it's partner third-parties) keep trying different methods to collect data from me. Does Vivaldi really want its users to have an antagonistic relation with its brand?
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I use PortMaster (FOSS)
Thanks for the suggestion. That's unfortunately not available for macOS. But I already do use an application firewall on it (with a limited whitelist).
But as I explained in another post, I would rather Vivaldi be clear if it is willing to respect its users wish to protect their privacy. Otherwise, hacks like using firewalls to circumvent Vivaldi "tracking" will just end up as an irritating battle between Vivaldi trying different methods to "track" their user, and the user trying to figure and block that new method. I'd rather not have that kind of antagonistic relation that would sour my perception of Vivaldi as a brand and company. (Especially when equally good and privacy respecting competing alternates are already available).
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@shabeer , I think that Vivaldi respect more the privacy of the user as any other browser, so called privacy friendly. A good browser without any telemetries don't exist, not even TOR. It isn't the cuestion that a browser "phone home", it is the cuestion what data it content, why they do it and what they do with this data.
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A good browser without any telemetries don't exist, not even TOR.
You are right about Tor - I was surprised to find that it still makes automated requests to Firefox servers, and the developers don't want to fix that for some strange reasons (even though it is promoted as the most secure private browser). That said, both Pale Moon and Orion browser don't initiate any automated network requests when such features are disabled. Respecting your users is the right way to build trust and a loyal user base.
I think that Vivaldi respect more the privacy of the user as any other browser, so called privacy friendly.
Unfortunately, due to the lack of informed consent from the user, that is not clear and I find it hard to accept. Especially when Vivaldi is also working with Google, a company known for its intrusive privacy invasive practice of data mining its users data. I appreciate your (and all the others) time and effort in clarifying the issue, but I remain unconvinced that offering what I have requested will financially devastate Vivaldi. Rather, I can confidently assert that it will only increase Vivaldi's user base, which can create more opportunities to increase revenue.
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@shabeer , Vivaldi isn't working with Google, it use a partial degoogled Chromium base and let the rest of GoogleAPIs to the user choice in the settings, Vivaldi don't send any user data to Google. Mozilla do this, when you use it's servers, it send user data to Alphabet and Nest (Google's advertising companies) and use Google analytics, what Vivaldi don't do.
If there are calls to Google it is more possible in Vivaldi that this is caused by some extension or by the search engine you use, which Vivaldi naturally cannot avoid, since it depends on the user himself.