Solved Vivaldi Browser: Privacy Review
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@pathduck said in Vivaldi performed severely on the privacy test.:
people at least be able to think for themselves
You're right, Shirley.
You’re ALL individuals!
Yes! We’re all individuals!
You’re all different!
Yes, we ARE all different!
I’m not …
Sch! -
@cocreate We had many posts here about PrivacyTests
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Ppafflick marked this topic as a question on -
Ppafflick has marked this topic as solved on
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@westlaner Without brand loyalty, there can be no growth of the brand. With brand loyalty, there will always inevitably be some defense of the brand. Goes with the territory. There is nothing untoward with folks offering reasons why they feel their loyalty is justified.
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@westlaner I don't think so. I think you may mistake brand loyalty for "circle the wagons." You say "there is a..." without citing an instance or source of this thing that "there is..." resulting in an unprovable and unfalsifiable generality. I think you may see people showing loyalty, and interpret it as defensiveness, but there really is no way for me to know because you have not cited an instance or a source. So, potayto, potahto...
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@westlaner That is lesson no. 1 and the first basic law concerning internet argumentation. No one ever wins, and no one ever changes their mind.
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@cocreate said in Vivaldi Browser: Privacy Review:
he also regrets dropping Presto of Opera.
That's not strictly true. He said if he were still at Opera, Opera would still have its own engine. The reason it changed was because he was leveraged out of control of the company (which is also why he decided to leave, as they changed in a direction he could not support). So he can't really regret something that someone else did after he lost control of the company. Just trying to be accurate.
Of course he also explained why, today, no one is building their own engine. It's just too much work to first, build it, and second, try to keep it compatible with a web that is following another engine around like a puppy dog. What he told me, in a chat we had at the Magnolia Vivaldi offices, was that his estimate was that to keep the Presto engine competitive would have required an additional 100 core team developers or so. He was ready to go that direction. The Opera investors, who had gained control of the company, were not.
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@cocreate , currently everybody depends direct or indirect on Google (Blimk, Mozilla/Geckko, sponsored by Google and surveillance advertising by Alphabet and NEST), Apple (Webkit) or M$ (Google AND M$). all other engines are with compatibility issues, outdated or discontinued, this is the problem, privacy only depends on the browser companies, stripping out the spyAPIs, and the user himself, using privacy search engines, VPN, ad/trackerblocker and common sense in the use of services of certain companies.
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So this may be a flawed - perhaps highly flawed or even downright deceptive - comparison, but Vivaldi is not looking very great here.
The guy who created this page actually works for Brave in "privacy engineering" and he does not outline the test methodology. For all we know he leaves the ad and tracker blockers in Vivaldi disabled or something. (Especially considering my overall opinion of that project's ethics)
But it's certainly "interesting" in any case.
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@Pathduck said in Vivaldi Browser: Privacy Review:
@guigirl Every time we read about fingerprinting, it's always "researchers find this, security boffins find that..." etc, but has anyone ever shown that fingerprinting is actually being used to track users outside of purely theoretical research?
Yes, over and over again. These adtech companies would not spend millions and millions of dollars on developing this tech if it didn't benefit them greatly. (And by benefit, I mean "track everything on the web that people do and make boatloads of money from it", because that's their business-model)
This ignorance is not impressive for someone who deleted my post from last night and subsumed it into this thread which 99.99% of the people browsing the Vivaldi forums will now never see.
Convenient.
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PPathduck moved this topic from Let's talk about Vivaldi on -
@ImaginaryFreedom , seeing these results, I obviously think of a subjective and manipulated result, which would only be possible with the blocker disabled and all Google services enabled, simply because I can't explain how even degoogled Chromium and precisely Edge have better results with Vivaldi as the worst, apart of Opera.
It is clear that Brave sees Vivaldi as the most serious competitor and if the author works for this company, the intention will be clear.
I personally trust more the results in Browserleaks, which teach me that with Vivaldi the results are almost unavailable or show false results, with the settings I use.
In any case, as long as surveillance advertising is legal, which is the root of the problem, the war between the big companies and advertising companies that use increasingly petty and miserable techniques to be able to profile and track the user and developers of privacy techniques will continue. -
@Catweazle said in Vivaldi Browser: Privacy Review:
@ImaginaryFreedom , seeing these results, I obviously think of a subjective and manipulated result, which would only be possible with the blocker disabled and all Google services enabled, simply because I can't explain how even degoogled Chromium and precisely Edge have better results with Vivaldi as the worst, apart of Opera.
It is clear that Brave sees Vivaldi as the most serious competitor and if the author works for this company, the intention will be clear.
I personally trust more the results in Browserleaks, which teach me that with Vivaldi the results are almost unavailable or show false results, with the settings I use.I had a back/forth with the creator of that site on Reddit.
He claims that he was hired by Brave after creating the site, but regardless the chronology clearly Brave has a vested interest in promoting itself and they probably hired him because his site made their product look good.
When I first looked at the site there was little to no info that I could find that detailed how he setup his tests. Now apparently there is, maybe he added it after I griped about that.
Regardless, he's apparently testing products in their default configuration. Given that Vivaldi's default is not super-restrictive (likely because they are trying to avoid the trap of having new users criticize the product over "broken sites"), then it looks bad under those circumstances though I would argue by not bringing up this "little detail" the site still "puts their thumb on the scale" in favor of products like Brave.
I tend to get a lot of downvotes wherever I share my opinion of Brave on public fora these days. Brave seems to have "bought" a lot of loyalty through promises of sending their users money to browse websites (in the form of dicey crypto) as well as funding a ton of promotional activities around the web where they obviously pay various people and companies to promote their product. (Their marketing is clever in more ways than one. Eg the idea of goosing sales by making it sound like if someone uses their product they are "brave" even if they are a weak milktoast without a single thought of their own, is probably an effective, if cynical, marketing tactic.)
In any case, as long as surveillance advertising is legal, which is the root of the problem, the war between the big companies and advertising companies that use increasingly petty and miserable techniques to be able to profile and track the user and developers of privacy techniques will continue.
Yep.
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For those of you who still think that browser and device fingerprinting is just some "theoretical thing that nerds talk about", please see the links below and educate yourselves.
Most of these links are from companies that are actually in the device fingerprinting business.
Here’s Why Device Fingerprinting Is Useful in AdTech (TMS - web apps developer)
What Is Browser Fingerprinting & How Does It Work? (SEON - web anti-fraud tech)
The Quiet Way Advertisers Are Tracking Your Browsing (Wired)
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@ImaginaryFreedom , precisely because I know the importance of Fingerprinting, I use Trace, which avoids this and a whole series of other tracking techniques, at least until Vivaldi adds his own functions in this regard.
In any case, it is recommended to use a VPN today, even if it is a free one, such as the free versions of Proton (no limits of monthly data) or Windscribe (Limited data/month), both no logs and stron encryption. -
@Catweazle said in Vivaldi Browser: Privacy Review:
@ImaginaryFreedom , precisely because I know the importance of Fingerprinting, I use Trace, which avoids this and a whole series of other tracking techniques, at least until Vivaldi adds his own functions in this regard.
Thanks for that reference, I will take a look at Trace.
In any case, it is recommended to use a VPN today, even if it is a free one, such as the free versions of Proton (no limits of monthly data) or Windscribe (Limited data/month), both no logs and stron encryption.
VPN's are not any solution to browser fingerprinting, in fact one of the key reasons that browser fingerprinting is on the rise these days is that it allows people to be tracked regardless whether they are using a VPN or not.
Also I do not recommend any "free" VPN services because if you're not paying for something you're the product, and that's a really bad idea when it comes to VPNs. (Many "free" VPN's have been caught in various privacy scandals)
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@ImaginaryFreedom , I also know that free VPNs in most cases are not reliable or even log and sell user data. But there are exceptions to this rule and ProtonVPN is one of them and a trusted one.
ProtonVPN was developed by scientists from CERN in Switzerland, they make money with the paid version and offer with this also a free version, somewhat simpler and naturally limited in the number of servers available (23 servers in 3 countries), apart from only allowing one instance, either on the PC or on the mobile. But it has strong military-grade encryption and reasonable speed, no user log in and no ads.
Highly recommended if you need a VPN occasionally, even for streaming as there is no data limit.
Also using ProtonMail like me, you don't even need a new registration, the VPN runs with the same account.
Windscribe is equally reliable, although due to monthly data caps at 10Gb, more suitable for mobile use, for example to connect to a public WiFi or the like.
I also know that a VPN does not avoid fingerprint and other tracking methods, but for this I already use the corresponding extensions that randomize or block this data. -
I know about Proton's VPN service. As I recall it has a rather low data limit or something for the free version.
One of the very few free VPN services I would remotely consider, though.
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@ImaginaryFreedom , Proton VPN free don't have any data limits, is the only free VPN reliable without limits in the use of data. The only limits in the free version are the few servers and that you can't install it in more than one terminal, PC or Mobile. Apart from fewer settings as in the paid version. But yo can use the monthly Gb you want, no limits. Speed ~35-45Mbs depending of the server you use, enough for streaming or online gaming.
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@MattEclipsed Unfortunately the post marked as "solution" seems to reflect a misunderstanding of what my website, PrivacyTests.org, is revealing. The tests on the page are not heuristics. Rather they are showing how each browser is leaking private data.
While it's good that Vivaldi's tracker blocking exists, it is my contention that this approach is inadequate for a number of reasons:
- Vivaldi's tracker blocking is not enabled by default (not even in Private Windows). Why not?
- Vivaldi is not blocking all third-party trackers. For example, my testing indicates that Vivaldi does not block scripts from bat.bing.com, even with "Block Trackers" enabled. Bing Ads has been reported as one of the top trackers by https://whotracks.me/trackers.html. Why isn't Bing blocked? (Note that Bing is also Vivaldi's default search engine.)
- Vivaldi is relying on blocklists to stop tracking without any (apparent) strategy for preventing tracking done by trackers that aren't on the blocklist.
Now let's look at some of the important gaps in Vivaldi's protections, according to results of my tests:
- Third-party cookies are neither blocked or isolated in Vivaldi by default.
- Vivaldi is not blocking tracking query parameters on any website I tested. (Tracking query parameters are a common way that users are tracked across sites.)
- Vivaldi does not offer a proxy, VPN or Tor mode, so, in general, users' IP addresses are revealed to all websites they visit and there is no built-in option to avoid that.
These are a few key privacy leaks that Vivaldi could fix, as other browsers are doing. Given that Vivaldi is portraying itself as a anti-tracking, it should work to improve and expand its privacy protections, instead of telling people that my site is "misleading".
As I have mentioned to the Vivaldi team previously, I would be happy to have a discussion regarding the test results and how Vivaldi might improve. I hope Vivaldi will be more open to constructive feedback for the sake of their users' privacy.
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@privacytests Dude, no one cares about your silly test. But just to make one thing clear: introducing a Tor mode in third party browsers is detrimental to the goals of the project. Tor should be used with the Tor browser alone and with standard settings. Even that isn’t good enough, but it’s a start. So no, Vivaldi shouldn’t introduce a Tor mode and when you talk about VPN I can only assume you are pointing towards Opera… it’s not a real VPN and I wouldn’t trust it personally.
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@privacytests , a browser VPN never can substitute a desktop VPN, because only can create a tunel AFTER the browser conect to the server of your ISP. As @luetage said, Opera VPN is a simple proxie in the own servers of Opera, which logs also your activity. Good for access country retricted videos, but no more.
The ad and tracker blocker is quite efficient, apart permits to add the filters you want, it lacks only (yet) the context option and the advanced mode that uBO has, but use the same filters and all these you want, even those against thes annoying cookie pop-ups.
The only what Vivaldi don't has (yet= is the protection against fingerprinting, but for this you can use Trace or Privacy Badger, which make a good job.
For a privacy check I prefer Browserleaks, where my Vivaldi mostly shows N/D or wrong values in thr results, that is enough for me.
