Hi folks,

Now this doesn’t have anything to do with outlining – directly. But it does have to do with information management, privacy etc. etc.

I’ve just discovered DuckDuckGo browser! Now, it used to exist for mobile only, but recently they’ve released desktop version for Mac and Windows.

The difference between the browser and all the other browsers – with the exception of Brave – is the fanatical focus on privacy (there’s much more about it on the browser website at https://duckduckgo.com/app and also on DuckDuckGo’s main website at https://duckduckgo.com/ A lovely little icon in the address/URL bar keeps track of all the things the browser is blocking, and immediately alerts you to issues.

And the big difference between the browser and all other browsers (including Brave) is its size! Where browsers usually muscle in anything up to a GB (and sometimes more!) in size, DuckDuckGo’s browser is a modest 190MB or so. It imports your bookmarks and passwords from your existing browser(s), and so far I’ve been blown away by its speed and simplicity.

It also has its own built-in YouTube reader (which you can activate or deactivate, depending on your preferences) which automatically wipes the ads. Heh heh…

In the same vein, Mullvad - one of the top privacy-oriented VPN companies (and the VPN [re]sold by Mozilla/Firefox and by MalwareBytes) - also came out with its own privacy-focused "Tor-developed browser produced to minimize fingerprinting and tracking."

https://mullvad.net/en/browser

The default search engine is DuckDuckGo, but can also choose as default Startpage (anonymous results from Google), Brave Search, Mojeek and Mullvad's own Leta search engine. (And from DDG' search you can switch in a search to Google by appending !G to the search term.) It also comes with the uBlock Origin ad-blocker built in.

A main selling point for Mullvad is that each user's browser utilizes the exact same browser fingerprint so individuals can't be picked out:

"We have standardized configurations and don’t recommend users to change settings. Firefox’s resist fingerprinting mode is on, and it will spoof many additional parameters and settings that could be used for fingerprinting. Only a specific set of fonts are made available for the browser and several hardware APIs are removed – like hardware concurrency and other APIs that could be used to extract information from your device. Another API used to fingerprint you is the WebGL, where the fingerprint attack tells your browser to render a triangle in 3D. The Mullvad Browser prevents websites from accessing the rendered content by blocking the readPixel function. One more sneaky way to collect your data for fingerprinting, is by measuring exactly how big your browser window is. Just think about it – are you the kind of user that maximizes your browser window? Or are you more a half the size of the screen kind of user? Letterboxing masks your real dimensions by adding a space around the window. So, no matter how you resize your browser, your window dimensions are unlikely to uniquely identify you."

Although I continue to use the Brave browser (which has more limited anti-fingerprinting built into it) with a number of optional Chrome extensions for privacy and convenience, the Mullvad and DuckDuckGo browsers have supplanted Firefox for me.

FWIW, Avast Secure Browser is also an alternative. It's based upon Chrome and the main reason to consider it over other secure browsers is that it fixes Chrome's (and Firefox's, Opera's, etc.) NOTORIOUSLY insecure password feature; allowing you to store passwords without concern that they'll be exposed to the outside world.

When choosing a secure browser it's important that they update quickly to address reported attacks. I'm not sure about other platforms but Avast hasn't been updated for a month on macOS and iOS. Since then Chrome/Chromium (Blink engine) has been updated at least six times, at least half of them to address zero-day/overflow attacks that have been seen in the wild.

The DDG browser was last updated 5 days ago the Mullvad browser 3 days ago, Vivaldi's desktop browser 10 days ago (and the iOS browser was updated today) - all of the desktop browsers use the same Chromium engine as Avast's browser.

(Firefox was 6 days ago, Safari 20 days ago - but they use different rendering engines.)

The main current issue of ComputerActive (UK) dedicates its main cover to "Stop using browsers that track you".
The article, apart mentioning the best settings for Chrome and Edge, lists:
- Brave, best for all-round privacy, with privacy 5/5
- Tor browser, best for anonimity, with privacy 5/5 (but very slow)
- Duckduckgo, best for simplicity, with privacy 4/5 (but cannot add other private extensions)
- Firefox, best for tracking protection, with privacy 4/5 (but needs to add private extensions)
- Bullvad, best for using with Vpn, with privacy 3/5 (most of its privacy is tailored to Vpn only)

I use Brave, and I'm happy with it, but that review shortchanges the power of Mullvad's browser anonymization, which is significantly better than Brave's. Not only that the review misunderstands what the Mullvad browser does, listing it as "tailored for VPN use" is not just wrong but meaningless.

I supplement Brave's built-in ad blocking with uBlock Origin, and I also use several privacy-related extensions (Cookie Autodelete, Decentraleyes, minerblock, pixelblock and others) but my browsing habits can still be tracked based on my unique installed fonts, the OS platform I'm using, my window size(s), screen resolution, time zone and offset, etc -- all of which Mullvad addresses, only some of which Brave randomizes.

If you look at the chart at https://privacytests.org/ you'll see that Mullvad mostly matches Brave in the many categories listed, but pulls away in the cross-session third-party tracking tests.

Using Brave, the Privacy.net analyzer determined:

40.24% of observed browsers are Chrome 118, as yours.
13.24% of observed browsers run Mac, as yours.
0.00% of observed browsers run Mac 10.15, as yours.
62.95% % of observed browsers have set "en"as their primary language, as yours.
4.98% % of observed browsers have UTC-04:00 as their timezone, as yours.

And https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ says the Brave browser has

Bits of identifying information: 8.65
One in x browsers have this value: 402.71

One in 400 makes me sufficiently unique and therefore susceptible to tracking and building a files on my habits.

Now using Mullvad, the Privacy.net analyzer determined:

Your browser is Firefox 115 and resolution is set to 1400x1200. (NOT TRUE)
42.35% of observed browsers are Firefox 115, as yours.
13.24% of observed browsers run Mac, as yours.
0.00% of observed browsers run Mac 10.15, as yours.
62.95% % of observed browsers have set "en"as their primary language, as yours.
0.00% % of observed browsers have UTC-00:00 as their timezone, as yours.

The only thing it got right was that I was using a Mac, but it got the version wrong. (Same for the Brave test.) But Brave gave up more real information.

And https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ says the Mullvad browser has

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/115.0
Bits of identifying information: 5.72
One in x browsers have this value: 52.7
Bits of identifying information: 1.95
One in x browsers have this value: 3.87

Since Mullvad falsified this, and randomizes results over time, privacy is much more secure.

Very thorough, very helpful.
Thank you very much!

> - Brave, best for all-round privacy

No one is perfect though. As it has been discovered it installs, in the present version at least, two not required Vpn Services in your Win system, to be used in case you subscribe its Vpn service. But it does so in any case, even when you do not subscribe its Vpn service at all.

This is very interesting satis.
I didn't try the new browsers. But, what I like about Brave, in contrast to other methods, such as privacy addons in Firefox, is that many websites do not seem to know that their adds are getting blocked by Brave. Websites that show popups about blocking their adds (while using Adblock Origin), do not do so in Brave. That is very good.
I don't know that could be the case with the other browsers you mentioned.