Vivaldi 1.9 – Plant trees as you browse
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@joss @Gwen-Dragon: I'll interfere as this is becoming a silly fight coming from confusion and bad communication.
I'll address the points @joss makes.
First, the extensions. Ecosia does have a Firefox extension, this I can confirm, the extension does have some issues as reported by some users of the extension. I can't say if they do have a Chrome extension, but I did find one, but did not install it as I could not truly verify it was official. At least when I open Ecosia with Vivaldi I don't see any link pointing to such extension.
Even if such extension is official it's not installed by Vivaldi itself, you must do it willingly. Also Vivaldi is not encouraging you to install it. What Vivaldi is doing is that now, for some locales, Ecosia is the default search engine when you install it fresh - old profiles are not affected, in the future Vivaldi might add it as an option, but will never change your defaults - so when you search in the address or search fields it will use Ecosia - again, only with a fresh install, if you use a privacy oriented search you'll continue to use it, Ecosia is NOT INSTALLED in Vivaldi.
As such Vivaldi does not disclose any info to Ecosia, it merely makes a search using it, just like you would type ecosia.org and then search from their page. In this way Ecosia can obtain as much information as any other webpage can, but Vivaldi does not send anything to them. The only real thing is that the search has tt=vivaldi in the address so that they know it came from this partnership.
As for Bing retaining data, yes, the search through Ecosia goes through Bing and Bing might retain this data they receive from Ecosia, I don't know the details.
Another point to make is that nothing is changing in privacy terms, the previous defaults in most places was Bing, in others Yahoo, in some places it's still Bing or Yahoo, in most countries around Russia & Russia itself it's Yandex. And all of those operate very similar, and like Google they obtain the info for ads and customising search.
Also, if you find offensive about a possible data collection from an Ecosia extension, it's just an extension. Google has a browser and two Operating Systems to do that, but remember kids, only Microsoft Windows 10 is the evil monopolist OS that collects data.
-- Edit --
And another thing I forgot:Q. Is Ecosia non-profit?
A. NO, they are for profit, just like Bing, Google, Yahoo, Yandex, etc.
"OMG, let's burn them alive!"
HOLD! Step back a moment, yes, they are for profit and work like the above search engines, BUT 80% of their profit is donated to reforestation projects, all the other engines donate 0% to reforestation projects. Now the choice is up to the user.
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This thing is becoming like witch hunt.
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@Ayespy said in Vivaldi 1.9 – Plant trees as you browse:
@joss: Ecosia is not able to receive any data from Vivaldi or Vivaldi users other than data generated by transactions directly involving use of the ecosia search engine. Neither is Bing. Bing can only receive data generated by transactions involving use of the Bing search engine.
There is no structure in the browser that allows third parties to collect data.
So the search engine handling code in vivaldi is different than that of chrome?
In chrome, ecosia and microsoft can access the users' search history and browsing history. -
@Ayespy said in Vivaldi 1.9 – Plant trees as you browse:
@joss: A former user posted a warning that using Ecosia exposed users to virus or Trojan-like activity. This is ill-informed or a deliberate lie, and evidently intended to hurt Vivaldi.
If you or other "moderator"s have a comment about a post of "a former user" then please address it to a former user, not to joss
If a person wants to remain utterly anonymous on the web these days, the bare minimum is a vpn, the use of an anonymous search engine (none of the popular engines), refuse all cookies and java/flash use, and possibly even a strategy like TOR.
Short of that, if anyone is OK using Google, Blink, Yahoo, Dogpile or anything like that, then ecosia introduces LESS, not more, privacy concerns. I personally (not speaking for Vivaldi) am heartily sick and tired of all the "OMG, your data is being stolen!" paranoia and conspiracy theories proliferating on the web to make everyone convinced that if they don't clothe themselves in lead-lined tinfoil and employ (and buy) every anti-virus (the vendors of which harvest data from you) and anonymizing product and strategy available, that every search vendor, ISP, email service/client and government agency in the world is peering into your bedroom, reading everything you type, and selling your personal data to persons who are out to steal your soul. Real is real. There ARE real privacy and manipulation threats. But universal suspicion and paranoia, especially that which relies on magic to work, is counter-productive.
Each user has their own preference about their level of privacy. I shall continue to not negatively comment on your preferred level of privacy, and I expect the same consideration to be given to me.
As to vivaldi, in my opinion it should do the same by not by default including settings or add-ins which communicate the users' information (such as for example their browsing history or search history) to third parties, without at least an upfront disclosure.
Those who wish to share their personal information with google/facebook/microsoft/amazon/apple can do so themselves; as a principle vivaldi should not by default do it for them or without their overt knowledge. -
@joss You are confusing the search functionality with an extension. They are two completely different and unrelated things.
The search functionality is the one offered in the browser's settings. Any decent browser in the known universe has such settings. In Vivaldi it's under "Settings > Search > Search Engines", on Chrome it's under "Settings > Manage search engines...", on Firefox it's under "Settings > Search".
This setting merely adds a special URL, like "duckduckgo.com/?q=%s" and all the browser do is to call this URL changing the %s with your query. Exactly like you have typed in the address field. So if you search for 'test' for example, the browser will merely make as if you have typed "duckduckgo.com/?q=test" in the address.
The extension is that thing you download on the Chrome Web Store and that requires those permission, that thing is completely optional and is not needed to include ANY search engine to the browser. And will never be bundled with Vivaldi.
What Vivaldi has done was to add an entry in the search functionality and NOT add the extension. So that, on clean installs, when you try to search for something it's like you are accessing Ecosia, rather than Bing or Yahoo. Nothing more, nothing less.
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@An_dz - To be fair, you don't need an extension to SIGN IN to Google and Bing, in which case they will save your search history forever. If you are not signed in to an account, they can't save the search results as tied to your personal identity. But if you are signed in, you can also go to each of their websites and both delete your search history and set it to not be saved. Then all they have is cookies, just like everyone else.
Signing in to MS or Google also enables them to save your browsing history to the degree you use their services to reach sites.
Moral of this story: Don't sign in to services that you don't want to track you.
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@joss: I believe you misunderstand how/where search engine providers get their data. There are three ways: Cookies; Create a profile and sign in to provider accounts; Use their extension. There is no coding in a browser (any browser) that forwards data to search engine providers without your participation. It's true that if you have a Google account and are signed in, chrome harvests a TON of data (via your Google ACCOUNT). You can turn off most, if not all, of that data harvesting through your account settings. You are not able to sign Vivaldi in to a Google account. Hence, Google can't use Vivaldi to harvest data. However - use Google search engine, use GMail, use Google calendar or contacts, it doesn't matter what browser you use, you leave a data trail with Google.
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@joss: I just tested this. I am signed in to 3 GMail accounts at the same time. I have an extensive search history with Google. I am accidentally signed in to an MS account (Once you sign in for a single thing, they evidently give you a permanent cookie and keep you signed in forever, no matter what.) and used the ecosia engine for a couple of searches, which created ZERO Bing search history. I did an experimental Bing search which caused an instant Bing search history entry. So evidently, using ecosia search does not pass your ID to MS even though they use the Bing engine. If there is a history created, only ecosia would seem to have access to it, so their privacy policies, whatever they are, would appear to rule.
"How does Ecosia handle search and data privacy?
Ecosia SupportApril 08, 2017 05:07
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One of Ecosia's goals is to be a privacy friendly engine. We believe that an individual's personal data, including their search queries, are their own business and no one else's.But the policies of our independent partners may differ from our own, which limits our ability to make promises regarding privacy. Ecosia does not permanently store any personally identifiable data. We are still required to send some personal data (e.g. parts of your account IP address or browser type) to our search partner Bing, who may analyze this data. Regardless, we promise to continue improving Ecosia's privacy situation whenever and wherever possible. For a complete rundown of Ecosia's most current privacy policy, please have a look here."
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@LBH said in Vivaldi 1.9 – Plant trees as you browse:
@mossman I don't know about "any more," because I was never a very heavy Bing user - in fact, hardly used it it at all. But in the last few days I compared it to Google, and was not satisfied. For the KIND of research I do, it doesn't measure up. If I was using my search engine for shopping, it might do the trick. But that's not what I do.
Who said "any more"?!? Not me...
What you're describing is exactly why I said Bing is not very good.
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I just switched my default search engine back to Google for the same reasons. The results for Ecosia were not as useful.
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Thank you! Typing youtube and getting a full video URL was one of my few quibbles with Vivaldi. Great to see the improvements continue!
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For the "Notes" application, why not just incorporate CSAIL's list.it app? It already has all of the required specs built in (sort, find, etc.) and is quite handy.
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@vivald777: Which is why the developers continue, and will always continue, to work on performance and resource usage.
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New tab Button has two frames when I press it:
Windows 10 64 bit, Creators update -
Dragging extensions doesn't work on my Win7/32 PC with address bar at bottom of Vivaldi.
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@longrun: Do you have animations enabled?
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@ayespy: That was the problem! Thanks so much.
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Very well...and what about sync?
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please add bookmarks saving feature to the cloud.. sync is the only problem with vivaldi now. great browser... cheers
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@vivald777 why don't you use the modify option? When you post you got (for a certain time) the ability to edit you're previous post, by clicking on the 3-dots icon on the right side.
