Privacy panel
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I feel that with Privacy, the entire discussion is extremely black and white. It is always possible to find someone with an even more pronounced need declaring that what Vivaldi does is not enough. Reading a comment on https://www.ghacks.net/2022/06/03/opinion-i-love-the-tab-grouping-feature-of-web-browsers/ (I'm too stupid to find out how to link to the specific comment ... the second one from the top posted June 3rd, rant against Vivaldi) made me think that it's ultimately all about transparency.
Vivaldi tries to be very transparent with blog posts and the privacy information on vivaldi.net. But all that info needs to be found some way.
Hence, I suggest to add a privacy panel to Vivaldi to make that information more accessible. I think this should contain 1) a section that is specific to the currently open tab (or tabs) showing what Vivaldi does for you to protect your privacy and 2) (to my point above) another section that is specific to what Vivaldi itself does that people may worry about, like user counting and letting ads and trackers from partners pass.
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Open Tabs specific: similar to the privacy statistics on the speeddial start page, but reduced to the currently open tabs, potentially allowing to adjust the blocker level per page right in the panel
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Vivaldi specific: showing what connections Vivaldi generated since program start, essentially disclosing on the fly what happens while using the browser - along with a short info (again similar to the info popup of the speeddial privacy statistics page) right there what these connections are doing, what they can reveal about the user (e.g. from user counting), and links to more information like the Vivaldi blog posts. Also add quick access to the available settings that allow restricting those connections.
I guess people would appreciate the effort Vivaldi is taking to be transparent about what they do, gaining trust and helping to quiet down some of the vocal and alarmist fringe elements of the privacy community.
I think the panel is the perfect place for this information.
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I would rather have a blocker whitelist & blacklist inside a panel like uMatrix to allow me refine specific blocked domain/tracker/JS/image/media/iframe. I don't need to know how much stuff Vivaldi have blocked, I just need it to block the malicious stuff without blocking other harmless stuff coming from the same domain.
As of now, it's block all or nothing strategy... This is pretty much useless on website where blocking a (malicious) source from a domain would also blocked everything else (harmless) from the same domain.
In this case, we have no choice but to allow the malicious tracker to bypass the blocker in order to access an "unbroken" webpage. And the bad news is this sort of tactics is gradually becoming more popular in many website, cuz they know it's working & able to deter visitor from enable blocker.
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@dude99 right, essentially giving an assessment of how harmful the blocked / unblocked items are? That fits well with my main focus, the added transparency of what Vivaldi itself does when "phoning home"
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